Видео: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=_ZpzkLEZG3Y

I am the health physics supervisor for WCS.I manage all of the health physics related programs

for WCS.My background is I have a MA degree in health Physics from Oregon State Univ. and I worked for the DOE for a little bit before I came to WCS.

 O: How long have you worked here?

C: I've been here for almost five years.

 O: Chris, may I ask you to say a little bit about the classification of the radioactive waste in the U.S.? What kind of waste will be here? Could you estimate how much radioactive waste you have in the U.S.?

C: That's a very difficult question at the end.So I'll begin with talking about waste classifications.Generally we have three categories of waste.Each of them has subcategories.You have low-level waste, greater than class c waste, high level waste.Underneath, low-level waste, which is what WCS is authorized to dispose of, there's class a, b, and c.Each class is independently drive by the classificiati

C: How much? That's a very difficult question to answer the end.I'll start at the beginning and talk about waste classifications. Generally we have generally four categories of waste, each of them has sort of subcategories. You have low-level ways, greater than class C waste, high-level waste. So three, not four, sorry about that. Underneath low-level waste, which is what W CS is authorized to dispose of, there is Class A, class B, class C. Each class is independently driven by the concentration of specific radionuclides. For example, cobalt 60 has a limit, the highest cobalt 60 can have is class B, because it's mostly driven by transport concerns. You can only put so much and still have it regulatorily allowed to be on the road. So that's what kind of drives each of them and they have different categories. A lot of what goes into greater than class C waste, is non-fuel bearing materials that come out of reactors. That are, could be high in transuranics. So transuranics are greater than uranium 238, excluding plutonium 241, that have a concentration of greater than a hundred nano curies per gram.

So that's what we call tru waste. And a lot of that tru and high-level wastes requires going to a deep repository, it has very specific requirements for long-term disposition. A lot of power plants, because of a lack of options in this country, choose dry cask storage on the facilities until they can get to a point where we have the infrastructure in place for long-term disposition of the material. On the other side, we have class A, B, and C low-level waste, what W CS can dispose of. And in there you can get a whole bunch of different stuff. Specific to power plants, we can dispose of irradiated hardware, we've already disposed of a bunch of that, that stuff can range, when we take receipt, anywhere between five and 15,000 R per hour, when we take that here. To less stuff, like a drum full of kind of like tritium sources, so there's basically no dose rate, but there is a lot of it in there.

We take stuff from the medical industry, we take stuff from power plants, resident resins, residual resins, we take filters from other facilities and dispose of them. Then we have sealed sources. So things that don't trigger the requirements for a deep disposal.

 Oleg: What about plutonium 239.

Chris: We can take receipt of plutonium 239, 238, 240, all of them, as long as they are concentrations less than a hundred nanocuries per gram. That is for disposal. We can process here at WCS greater than a hundred nano cures program, but we cannot currently dispose of it under license.

Oleg: Could you explain for how long the storage will be dangerous for nature?

Chris: That's really specific more to actual isotopes. The majority of what we've seen here at WCS is going to be gone within about 50,000 to 60,000 years. What you're left with is uranium progeny. So you actually end up more long-term worrying about radon fields due to the daughter's decay rate and gas rises up through your decay structure than you are progeny making it out and going through. It's between 100 and 150,000 years when you see the peak dose to say an off-site resident from a well and then it's less than, let me do some quick conversions, I know you use Sieverts, we use millirem here. Iit's less than a millirem a year, so that's, less than a microsievert, around there, so that's the kind of thing we look at.

Oleg: So it means the storage will be dangerous for the environment for many generations?

Chris: Well, one of the things we pride ourselves about here at WCS, is the engineering we put into the cell and facility. It's not technically, if someone were to come to take it out of our engineering and our protection and put it on the ground, yes, but where it's out at the cell, the way it's designed, it's actually not dangerous to the public, the environment or anything, as long as it's there.One of the great things, I don't know if you've noticed, we're in the desert, we get very little rain. The evapotranspiration rate up keeps any infiltration from moving through the waste. We basically get no water going through our waste. That's based on long-term modeling, hydrus and other such tools. So that it's basically going to stay there until it decays away and becomes stable.

 O: What would happen if a plane crashed into the site? Or another case, if there were a tornado?

Chris: Luckily, I'm sure saw on your tour, we put everything in giant concrete canisters. These canisters weigh a little over 8,000 pounds or right around 8,000 pounds. So we actually had to do that as part of our licensing, go ahead and look at risk of tornadoes and other such things. What is the probability of a tornado actually striking here? And that's very, very, very close to zero. But if it were, what is the probability of it occurring and being able to lift up one of those lives. It can't happen. We're not really worried about a tornado hitting the cell and dispersing our material, just because the way we have to dispose of it under our license. As far as a plane, I mean, that's going to be what it is.

Oleg: Is this a national storage?

Chris: We do allow for out-of- compact disposal of waste in our facility, which means it's open to any of the other states. It has to go through our compact commission for approval, for disposal here, if it's not in the compact. The DOE or federal side is open to the other federal facilities for that cell. But that has to go through the DOE side.

Oleg: What will happen with the commissioning of old nuclear reactors and old nuclear power plants in the United States, more than 100 reactors? It's a huge amount.

Chris: In our compact, we actually have one right now going into cold shutdown, cold store. It will be be 15 to 30 years that they'll go into that before they move into decommissioning. If you actually look at the volumes of materials that come out of a power plant, as it goes into for decommissioning, you have a large amount of waste that is very low, activity, so there isn't actually a lot of danger there. And then you have some stuff that's been in the reactor, it's been activated, that over the course of 15-30 years is going to come down in activity, that will still kind of constitute, I don't know the percent offhand, but it's a small percent. It would come here, a place like this at WCS for disposal. I'm sure, depending on who you talk with, they'd like it all to come here. It's a very small percentage that would come here for our class A, B, C disposal under our compact facility.

Oleg: How long will monitoring of this site take place, after it closes?

Chris: After closure, I would have to go back and look at the decommissioning plan, but I believe we assume a hundred-year monitoring period. I believe. It feels right.

Oleg: Who provides such monitoring, an independent company?

Chris: No, the state already has ownership of that facility and cell, so after the closure, the state takes responsibility of that area and ensures that no one comes out here. And then the DOE federal has an agreement on their side.

Oleg: what kind of regulations are there in the United States, at the national level or regional level, do you use on this site?

Chris: On this site, we are licensed by TCEQ, who is the state of Texas. They have 30 TAC 336, where most of our stuff is. Their regulations are very similar to 10 CFR 20 which is the NRC's regulations. So the NRC monitors TCEQ to ensure that what they have in place to monitor us is, at minimum, meets the criteria to which they have. And they get audited every year, or I think every two years, by the NRC. And then they have regulatory authority over us.

Oleg: Do you know different experience about to provide long-term storage in different countries? Could you recommend something, according to your experience here, in the United States, for promotion in other countries? Why did you decide to use this model?

Chris: Well, every country and every location has its own challenges. What you find, especially in the United States, and I'm sure it's this way everywhere, is the political challenge. Getting something licensed and built is a very difficult and arduous task. I'm sure that's uniform everywhere. One of the reasons we chose this location was the buy off of the community. We are very lucky to have a community that supports what we do out here and has gone to great lengths to help us to get to where we are as a facility. As far as the design, a lot that came out of licensing, in the license application, and discussions with our regulator, that drove how we designed the facility the way we did. And then the science of the area, as far as what the facility has to have, geologically or underlying documents.

Oleg: For how long did such discussions with the locals last?

Chris: Honestly, I don't know, I haven't been with WCS that long. We had the license in place before I was here. I think that was back early 2000s. I'm guessing it was a little bit of conversation, I wouldn't wager a guess, I wasn't here.

Oleg: Do you have any visitors from the area who live around here?

Chris: We don't offer tours to members of the public. We have had the mayor of Andrews, and some other people like that, came out to see it. I know they definitely know we work here, because we've done meetings in Andrews.

Andrei: What government agencies set the standards, federal or state?

Chris: The question was, from an environmental aspect, who regulates us? That's different, depending on which permit or license you're talking about. And which requirement comes from. It will vary from EPA, I know we have some EPA standards that we have to meet for drinking water standards. Then we have 30 TAC release limits, which are affluent discharge limits, that are very similar to the NRC has under 10 NRC 20.

Then we have permit requirements that I think are Department of Health and Services driven, again through the state of Texas.

Oleg: Do you have any statistics about the health condition of the people who work at your site?

Chris: Well, as far as, I don't know what you mean by health. But I can give you a general dose distribution for exposure for employees. So we have, it's between 100 and 180 employees, somewhere in there. Our average radiation worker received, well our max last year was 340 millirem over the course of the year. Our average, discounting administrative personnel, so people who don't work around radiation, because that would skew our statistics, is right around 45 mg per year.

Oleg: Could you say some general information, how much radioactive waste will be here? How much it cost, this site for its construction?

Chris: I don't know the answer to the latter, what it cost to build. As far as the amount that can go there, currently it is mandated in our license. I'd have to look it up. We have a volume and a total curie limit for what we can dispose of in the CWF. I'm being handed a piece of paper with the answer. For the Texas Compact, 2.31 mln ft³ and 3.89 million curies are allowed for total disposal currently under our license for the CWF. And the FWF is 26 mln ft.³ and 5.6 million curies.

Andrei: How much does one cubic ft.³ cost to dispose of here?

Chris: Another excellent question to which I don't know the answer. As the health physics guy, I just make sure people are safe. I don't know what they charge for it.

Question: Do we have other questions?

Andrei: I don't know how to answer that question. If you look at the time it took, the energy it took, and putting the right people together the right scientific minds, that part is high. But overall I'm guessing they are probably the same (to get licensed and to be build; I don't know what the value). There was a lot of time and energy that went into that process. It took several years and a lot of work to move through the regulatory process to get us licensed and opened. And then even once we were licensed, there was still even more effort to demonstrate that the facilities had been completed, and met the departments as set forth in the license, before we were allowed to open for disposal.