February 2022 | The Council of State Governments | Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee
Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Newsletter
Upcoming Events
*All times are Central Time
February 10:
Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Consent Based Siting Request for Information (RFI) Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) Meeting - 10 AM*
February 10:
National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) Planning Committee Meeting - 1 PM*
March 1 - 2:
March 4:
March 6 - 10:
March 8 - 10:
April 19:
MRMTC Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group Quarterly Meeting - 10 AM*
May 3 - 5:
June 6 - 9:
2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF - Philadelphia, PA
June 7:
MRMTC Spring 2022 Meeting - Philadelphia, PA
June 27 - July 8:
November 13 - 17:
International High Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (Part of American Nuclear Society (ANS) Winter Meeting) - Phoenix, AZ
Committee Happenings
training_worldcloud.jpg
Hello members of the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) and other interested parties. If the committee were to adopt a theme for 2022, it should be "training, training, training." With the COVID-19 pandemic waning (hopefully) and an abundance of funds for travel, lodging, and registration expenses, committee members are highly encouraged to attend as many trainings, exercises, meetings, and conferences as they are willing and able to attend. Some good places to start looking for such opportunities include the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program (TEPP) website, the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) calendar, and the upcoming events calendar in these monthly newsletters. Committee members and other state employees who are interested in attending a specific event and want to learn more about reimbursement through the MRMTC should reach out to Mitch Arvidson.

In other committee news, the MRMTC Consent-Based Siting Request for Information (RFI) Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) held its first meeting on January 12. The purpose of this AHWG is to develop and submit responses to the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy's (NE) RFI on Using a Consent-Based Siting Process to Identify Federal Interim Storage Facilities. The group's final submission to DOE-NE will state the MRMTC's purpose, scope, and reason for responding to the RFI. Some of the questions cannot be related to transportation and will not be answered by the AHWG but the majority of the 16 questions will be answered. The AHWG's document will be distributed for review to the MRMTC as a whole ahead of the March 4 submission deadline. The MRMTC Consent-Based Siting RFI AHWG will next meet on February 10 to review some initial draft responses.

While one MRMTC group is preparing to submit comments to DOE, a different group submitted comments on another topic earlier this week. The Revised Draft Railcar Safety Inspection Protocol is a document that seeks to develop an inspection reciprocity and sharing system among the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), states, Tribes, and rail carriers for future DOE rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high level radioactive waste (HLW). Throughout the creation of this document, DOE has sought input from states and Tribes through the NTSF SNF Rail/Routing AHWG. Earlier this week, Midwest members of this AHWG submitted their comments on this second draft. The comments were rather short because the revised draft captured and addressed the vast majority of comments that the Midwest provided on the original draft in July of 2020.

Finally, the DOE Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) distributed its semi-annual notification letter earlier this week. This letter projects the number of shipments of transuranic waste expected to be received by the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico during the 12-month period from February 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023. WIPP is projected to receive TRU waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (NM), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Savannah River Site (SRS) (SC), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (TN), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) (CA), and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) (IL). ANL shipments are the only ones that travel through states that are part of the MRMTC. In the next year, up to three shipments of TRU waste are expected to leave ANL. None of these three shipments are expected to occur in the next eight weeks.
National Transportation Stakeholders Forum
Another group involved with the NTSF, the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (TRMTC), held its Midyear Meeting last month on January 26 - 27 in San Diego, CA. TRMTC consists of representatives from over 20 Tribal Nations, and its mission is to provide tribal input to the DOE on programs and activities relating to the transport of radioactive waste and materials, including SNF.

Attendees were able to hear updates from a variety of federal partners, including a consent-based siting session with Dr. Kathryn Huff, who serves as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary while awaiting confirmation as DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy. Attendees also learned that the long-awaited update to the FRA's 1998 Safety Compliance Oversight Plan (SCOP), now called the Safety Compliance and Coordination Oversight Plan (SCCOP), is on track to be released by June. Finally, attendees were able to participate in a half-day tour of the decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). On the tour, visitors saw the dry storage independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) that now holds all of the site's SNF, learned about the recent shipment of the 770-ton Unit 1 reactor pressure vessel, and saw the mini railyard that has been constructed to transport material offsite.

In other NTSF news, the forum is focused on the planning of the 2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF. As such the NTSF Planning Committee has continued to meet regularly, most recently on January 12. The next meeting of the NTSF Planning Committee will be on February 10. Stakeholders should have received a save the date notification early this week with more details on the meeting. If you did not receive the notification, please let Mitch Arvidson know. Looking toward 2023, the Annual Meeting of the NTSF will be hosted by the Midwest. The MRMTC will soon begin looking for a venue and securing dates in earnest.
sanonofre
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego County, CA
Focus This Month
DOE Office of Environmental Management's (EM) 2021 Year in Review
While we are already a month into 2022 and working hard to have a productive year, it is helpful to take some time to look back on past successes. That is exactly what DOE-EM did in their "2021 Year in Review" published in late December. This document provides a high-level overview of the office's 2021 accomplishments and then goes into detailed highlights of progress at the 17 DOE-EM sites around the country. Each site's individual 2021 year in review can be found here. While it is worthwhile to check out the whole document, some of the Midwest and transportation-related accomplishments are listed below:

  • Certified and completed 30 legacy TRU waste shipments from LANL to WIPP in New Mexico;
  • Initiated demolition activities on the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site in southern Ohio, and demolished 40 percent of the building - the first of three massive structures being demolished;
  • Opened the Portsmouth On-Site Waste Disposal Facility and moved the first demolition debris generated from deactivation and decommissioning at the site into the facility; and
  • Received more than 200 TRU waste shipments at WIPP. More than 13,000 shipments have been received since the facility opened in 1999.

The DOE-EM mission is to address the nation's Cold War environmental legacy resulting from five decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. CSG Midwest receives funding from DOE-EM through the Office of Packaging and Transportation (OPT) to promote and enhance transportation planning, coordination, and communication in support of DOE shipments of radioactive material in the Midwest region.
Nuclear News
Federal SNF Updates
Last month, DOE's Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) released a new updated technical report. "Spent Nuclear Fuel and Reprocessing Waste Inventory, Rev. 8" provides information on the inventory of commercial SNF and HLW in the United States, as well as non-commercial SNF and reprocessing waste in the DOE complex. The report also includes projected inventories under four scenarios: a no replacement nuclear power generation scenario, an addition of "new builds" scenario, an early shutdown of Byron and Dresden reactors scenario, and a "subsequent" license renewal scenario. Additionally, the report includes estimated SNF inventories by state and congressional district. At 11,068 metric tons of uranium (MTU), Illinois has the most SNF in the Midwest, and the most in the U.S., by far. Michigan has the second most in the Midwest with 3,380 MTU and Wisconsin has the third most with 1,608 MTU.

In other federal SNF news, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) will be holding a virtual meeting on March 1 - 2 on the DOE SNF and waste disposition research and development (R&D) activities and consent-based siting process. Topics expected to be included are: R&D related to post-closure criticality of dual purpose canisters disposed in a repository, R&D related to welded canister corrosion and failure consequence, R&D activities related to storage and transportation, Waste Management System Analysis Tool Requirements, current status of DOE's Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START), and an update on DOE's consent-based siting efforts. The NWTRB also worked closely with DOE-NE for the Board's Fall 2020 Meeting. From that meeting, the Board recently prepared and released some findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

Nevada Official Clashes Again with Federal Government
In a public protest letter sent to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm on January 10, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada called on DOE to disclose the amount and type of radioactive waste being shipped to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) from INL. Titus' letter said that her office was not made aware of the shipments and that "the proximity of the NNSS to my District and the fact that dangerous materials could be sharing the roads with my constituents and visitors raise a number of questions for me about this shipment of nuclear materials."

In a prompt response, DOE said 13,625 cubic meters of low level waste/mixed low level waste have been shipped incident free since 2009 and are ongoing. The vast majority of the waste being shipped out of INL has been sent to WIPP in New Mexico. The waste originated from the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon production plant in Colorado. It is now being removed from Idaho because of legal challenges from the state and to protect the Snake River Plain Aquifer.

For more coverage, check out the Las Vegas Review-Journal, NBC3 News, and the Associated Press.

For Your Reading Pleasure
Finally, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been very busy lately. The agency has published a great number of reports in the last few months that may be of interest to MRMTC members and other interested parties.


Special thanks to Steve Maheras for bringing these publications to the committees attention!
"Spent Nuclear Fuel and Reprocessing Waste Inventory" state report for Illinois
Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on
March 3, 2022.
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Please do not reproduce or create new content from this material without the prior express written permission of CSG Midwest.

This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award Numbers DE-NE0008604,
DE-EM0004869, and DE-EM0005168.

This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.