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Low-Level Waste Disposal 157 and defense nuclear reactors; government fuel and weapons research has also produced some GTCC.118 Commercial GTCC waste makes up less than 0.01 percent of all LLW by volume generated annually. GTCC LLW remains radioactive for significantly longer than do other classes of LLW (more than 500 years) but does not necessarily require the kind of ultra-long-term (100,000 years or longer) precautions necessary to dispose of SNF or HLW; in this respect it is somewhat similar to TRU.119 Still, like TRU, the more highly radioactive GTCC wastes may call for disposal in a repository. At present, 4,600 cubic feet of commercial GTCC waste and 31,000 cubic feet of DOE GTCC-like waste are stored at the sites where they were generated. After current civilian nuclear power plant decommissioning projects and DOE nuclear waste cleanup projects are completed, DOE estimates that storage and disposal capacity for another 200,000 cubic feet of GTCC and GTCC-like waste will be required.120 GTCC waste is statutorily excluded from disposal at WIPP.121 Congress would have to amend existing law for GTCC waste to be disposed of there. NWPA restricts Yucca to HLW and SNF but grants NRC the power to designate any “highly radioactive material that the Commission, consistent with existing law, determines by rule requires permanent isolation” as HLW.122 In 1989, NRC promulgated a regulation requiring that GTCC waste be disposed of in a geologic repository, absent another NRC-approved disposal option.123 It is unclear whether this regulation by itself is sufficient to fulfill the NWPA condition for disposing of GTCC at Yucca; neither DOE nor NRC has ever claimed that NRC’s regulation does so. Accordingly, GTCC wastes, which represent a range of hazard levels (some relatively high that probably call for repository disposal of the wastes in question), are currently consigned to regulatory and disposal limbo. In February 2011, DOE issued a draft GTCC waste disposal EIS to explore disposal options.124 It sets forth five alternatives without indicating a preference. Alternative 1, the no-action baseline, appears in the EIS because a no-action baseline is required in every EIS by NEPA. Alternative 2 would dispose of GTCC waste with TRU at WIPP. Alternative 3 explores use of hundred-foot-deep boreholes. Alternative 4 would dispose of GTCC waste in near-surface trenches similar to those used for LLW but with more sophisticated barriers to prevent radionuclides from migrating. Alternative 5 considers enhanced above-grade vaults covered with soil to discourage intruders. For the last three options, DOE is analyzing the possibility of disposal at seven federal sites, as well as at a generic commercial LLW site.125 All seven federal sites being examined under alternatives 3–5 currently host facilities for LLW disposal.126 Options for Addressing LLW Disposal Problems The Clive facility, which handles 99 percent of the nation’s commercial class A waste, has ample capacity, without further expansion, to accommodate projected volumes of class A waste for the next fifteen years.127 Barnwell’s 2008 closure to out-of-compact waste, however, poses a major challenge for disposal of class B and class C LLW. This gap may well be met by the Andrews, Texas, facility, but at the cost of ceding extensive power to Texas, which will be able to effectively dictate the terms of class B and C LLW disposal to most of the nation. Further, relying entirely on just two disposal facilities to handle all of the nation’s civilian LLW is not an equitable solution, nor is it necessarily a 158 Fuel Cycle to Nowhere stable one because of the politics of NIMBYism, already apparent in local reaction to the Andrews vote of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission. Waste storage capacity limits—and consequent rising disposal costs—have created economic incentives that have led waste generators to take steps to reduce LLW waste volumes through a variety of means, including super-compaction, shredding, incineration , and decontamination. Super-compaction has achieved up to a 5,000 percent reduction in the volume of some class A wastes. Techniques to reduce waste volume alone, however, do not remove radionuclides, so the processed waste materials are still radioactive and must still be disposed of as LLW.128 Furthermore, an increase in radionuclide concentrations as a result of compaction can trigger more stringent regulation if the waste categorization radioactivity thresholds in 10 C.F.R. Section 61.55 (class...

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