Department of Energy March 7, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Savannah River Site. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. Monday, March 24, 2008: 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, 2008: 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Department of Energy (DOE), pursuant to DOE National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Regulations (10 CFR 1021.315), is amending the Record of Decision for the Waste Management Program: Treatment and Storage of Transuranic Waste issued on January 20, 1998 (63 FR 3629), and amended previously including on December 29, 2000 (65 FR 82985), and June 30, 2004 (69 FR 39446). Under this amendment to its Record of Decision (ROD), DOE intends to send both contact-handled (CH) and remote-handled (RH) transuranic (TRU) waste from certain generator sites as needed to the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to be treated and characterized prior to the shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for disposal. These sites are: the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) (Argonne, IL); Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory (BAPL) (West Mifflin, PA); General Electric Vallecitos Nuclear Center (GE) (Sunol, CA); the Hanford Site, (Hanford) (Richland, WA); Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (Nuclear Fuel Services) (KAPL-NFS) (Erwin, TN); Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL) (Schenectady, NY); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) (Berkeley, CA); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) (Livermore, CA); the Nevada Test Site (NTS); Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) (Schenectady, NY); Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) (Paducah, KY); and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) (Albuquerque, NM). DOE expects that most of the waste from these generator sites will be sent to INL for treatment and characterization. However, DOE may, when feasible, characterize some waste at these generator sites under the provisions of the modified WIPP Hazardous Waste Facility Permit that allow characterization based solely on process knowledge and ship that waste directly to WIPP or, in the case of SNL, send TRU waste to Los Alamos National Laboratory to be characterized, in accordance with the original (1998) ROD. In addition, TRU waste from Babcock and Wilcox (BW) (Lynchburg, VA), and NRD L,L,C, (NRD) (Grand Island, NY), will also be moved to INL to be treated and characterized prior to shipment to WIPP for disposal, only if that waste meets waste acceptance criteria for treatment at INL and is determined to be defense waste as required by the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act for waste to be eligible for disposal at WIPP. TRU waste would be accepted for treatment and characterization at INL only in accordance with the provisions of the settlement agreement in Public Service Company of Colorado v. Batt entered into between DOE and the State of Idaho in 1995 (the Idaho Settlement Agreement) and the Site Treatment Plan. The Idaho Settlement Agreement allows TRU waste from other DOE sites to be treated at INL if it is treated within 6 months of receipt and shipped out of Idaho within 6 months of treatment. DOE would also continue to remove TRU waste currently stored at INL in accordance with the terms of the Idaho Settlement Agreement. In accordance with DOE NEPA regulations (10 CFR 1021.314), DOE prepared a supplement analysis (SA), Supplement Analysis for the Treatment of Transuranic Waste at the Idaho National Laboratory (DOE/ EIS-0200-SA-03), to determine whether the proposed treatment and characterization of waste at INL prior to disposal at WIPP is a substantial change to the proposed action analyzed in DOE's Waste Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0200) (WM-PEIS) or whether there are significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns such that a supplement to the WM-PEIS or a new EIS is needed. Based on the SA, DOE has determined that a supplement to the WM-PEIS or a new EIS is not needed.