Department of Energy December 10, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a separately organized agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is amending the Record of Decision (ROD) for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Environmental Impact Statement (SPD EIS) (DOE/EIS-0283, November 1999). In the SPD EIS ROD (65 FR 1608; January 11, 2000), DOE announced decisions for implementing the U.S. Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, including affirming its January 1997 decision (62 FR 3014) to pursue a hybrid approach for the safe and secure disposition of up to 50 metric tons of surplus weapons-usable plutonium using both immobilization and mixed oxide (MOX) fuel technologies as evaluated in the Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Storage and Disposition PEIS) (DOE/EIS-0229, November 1996). Decisions announced in the SPD EIS ROD included construction and operation of three new facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina, to disposition approximately 17 tons of surplus plutonium using the immobilization approach and the use of up to 33 metric tons as MOX fuel that would be irradiated in commercial reactors. The three new facilities were identified as a pit disassembly and conversion facility (PDCF), an immobilization facility,\1\ and a MOX fuel fabrication facility (MFFF). These facilities as analyzed in the SPD EIS were to be constructed in F-Area at SRS and included capabilities for management of wastes generated as part of the processing activities in each of the facilities. DOE/NNSA is today announcing its decision to construct and operate a standalone building, the waste solidification building (WSB), for treating and solidifying liquid transuranic waste and certain liquid low-level radioactive wastes from MFFF and PDCF, specifically a high-activity (high-alpha) waste stream from MFFF, a low-activity stripped-uranium waste stream from MFFF, and a low-activity laboratory waste stream from PDCF.\2\ This decision is based on the Supplement Analysis for Construction and Operation of a Waste Solidification Building at the Savannah River Site (WSB SA) (DOE/EIS-0283-SA-2) prepared pursuant to DOE procedures implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (10 CFR 1021.314). The WSB SA demonstrates that construction and operation of a standalone WSB represent neither substantial changes relevant to environmental concerns nor significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns from those evaluated in previous NEPA documents.