Office of Environmental Management – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Energy (DOE) announces the availability of a draft determination that certain residual radioactive waste at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) Tank Farm Facility, located at the Idaho National Laboratory, is not high-level radioactive waste. DOE prepared the draft determination pursuant to Section 3116 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005. Although not required by the Act, DOE is making the draft determination available for public review and comment.

In October 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or the Department) issued the Final Idaho High-Level Waste (HLW) and Facilities Disposition Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0287 (Final EIS)). The Final EIS contains an evaluation of reasonable alternatives for the management of mixed transuranic waste/sodium bearing waste (SBW),\1\ mixed HLW calcine, and associated low-level waste (LLW), as well as disposition alternatives for HLW facilities when their missions are completed. DOE's preferred alternative in the Final EIS for SBW waste processing was to implement the proposed action by selecting from among the action alternatives, options, and technologies analyzed in the Final EIS, and to construct facilities necessary to prepare the SBW located at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) for the preferred disposition path to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). In the Final EIS DOE did not identify a preferred treatment technology for SBW from among the several technology options evaluated.