Southern Nuclear Operating Company’s Vogtle site was fined $8,000 and temporarily barred from sending waste to South Carolina after environmental regulators said the company had violated the law governing the transport of radioactive waste last year.
The incident — involving a shipping cask of spent resin radioactive waste — occurred at the EnergySolutions processing side of South Carolina’s low-level radioactive waste site in Barnwell. Southern Nuclear Operating Company had shipped it from the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant.
That’s when, on June 25, inspection staff at the Barnwell Processing Facility, which is a separately licensed operation from the Barnwell disposal site, noticed a discrepancy in a container identification number from the Vogtle shipment.
“Plant Vogtle employees shipped radioactive waste that was slightly outside the classification of the container in which it was shipped,” said Michelle Tims, communications coordinator for Southern Nuclear, on Wednesday. On July 3, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control informed Southern Nuclear that its radioactive waste-transport permit, issued on Jan. 2 of last year, was suspended for 30 days.
“Any radioactive waste generated by you is hereby prohibited from being transported within or into the state until you have demonstrated to the satisfaction of the department that adequate documented measures have been implemented to ensure compliance with all applicable requirements, and the department has notified you that the suspension has been lifted,” reads the DHEC letter.
As a result, the waste was kept onsite at Plant Vogtle until
South Carolina restored its permit.
In October, Southern Nuclear responded by giving DHEC a timeline of events that led to the identification problem and laid out the mitigation measures underway to prevent future lapses. Regulators claimed the company had violated the S.C. Radioactive Waste Transportation and Disposal Act. The November consent order, signed by Dennis Madison, site vice president of Vogtle, does not mean the company agrees or denies the facts or conclusions by regulators about violations.
“We entered into a consent order with (DHEC) and paid a penalty to avoid a prolonged regulatory proceeding,” said Tims in an email.
On Wednesday, both Tims and DHEC spokesman Jim Beasley said the public’s safety had not been jeopardized.
“The outside of the shipping cask was tested, and the radiation dose did not exceed applicable regulatory limits,” Beasley said
Beasley said the fine has been paid, and the matter is closed.
Tims said the company thoroughly investigated the event and put corrective measures in place to prevent it from happening again.
“There was never any danger to the public or improper disposal of the waste,” Tims said. “Southern Nuclear maintains close coordination with applicable state and federal agencies in its shipping activities.”
Meanwhile, at the Barnwell site, safety will be tightening.
In July of last year, the S.C. Court of Appeals ordered the landfill operator to improve its protection of the groundwater from contamination at low-level radioactive waste disposal site. The Sierra Club, represented by the S.C. Environmental Law Project, had not sought to force the operator to improve waste-handling procedures at the 235-acre site.
For nearly seven years, the site has only taken waste from the three member states of the Atlantic Compact: South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey. However Georgia’s Plant Vogtle is permitted to send waste for processing.