Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

The Energy Department and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant notified the New Mexico Environment Department last week that they plan to start major upgrades to the site’s ventilation system by next December. The notification was part of a recently published letter to John Kieling, chief of the New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2018 energy funding bill directs the National Nuclear Security Administration to address various legal and diplomatic hurdles in its proposed alternative plutonium disposition method before Congress considers funding the new approach and abandoning the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction in South Carolina. The House version of the energy and […]

House lawmakers this week approved a fiscal 2018 energy and water budget that would give the the Department of Energy about $30 billion and add three new cleanup projects to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The House Appropriations Committee agreed by voice vote Wednesday, with a few Democrat dissenters, to send the nearly $38 billion 2018 […]

After a federal judge blocked Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists’ takeover by EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, the Texas company is still trying to figure out what to do with more than 100 potentially flammable containers of transuranic waste it is storing for the Energy Department. Asked what the canceled merger means for the company’s contract […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico remains compliant with U.S. environmental law essential to the transuranic waste facility’s ongoing operations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that the Department of Energy is complying with the […]

After a federal judge blocked Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists’ takeover by EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, the Texas company is still trying to figure out what to do with more than 100 potentially flammable containers of transuranic waste it is storing for the Energy Department. Asked what the canceled merger means for the company’s contract […]

The Energy Department has received permission from the state of New Mexico to keep 26 containers of potentially flammable waste above ground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) until June 30, 2018. The agency made the request on June 9 and received the OK from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) on June 23, according to a […]

The Energy Department has received permission from the state of New Mexico to keep 26 containers of potentially flammable waste above ground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) until June 30, 2018. The agency made the request on June 9 and received the OK from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) on June 23, according to a […]

The Council of State Governments’ Midwestern Region will continue overseeing transuranic waste shipments to the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for another five years, under a $1.4-million cooperative agreement-extension announced late Friday. The council distributes the DOE funds to states through which transuranic waste moves on its way to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) […]

The New Mexico Environment Department will continue non-regulatory oversight of the Energy Department’s environmental monitoring programs at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant under a five-year, $2-million grant extension announced Thursday. The grant now will run through June 30, 2022, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management wrote in a press release. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) […]

Through June 9, the Energy Department had made 21 shipments of transuranic waste to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for disposal, according to the latest official DOE records. The count includes only shipments that have been buried at the deep-underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., for two weeks, meaning the actual shipment total in […]

Through June 9, the Energy Department had shipped 21 shipments of transuranic waste to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for disposal, according to the latest official DOE records. The count includes only shipments that have been buried at the deep-underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., for two weeks, meaning the actual shipment total could […]

Lawmakers challenged Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday to commit to resolving the issues that are preventing Congress from taking a definitive stance on the future of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. Perry reaffirmed the Energy Department’s intentions on MOX during a House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee budget hearing, saying […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry raised eyebrows this week by listing facilities in Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas as possible interim storage sites for U.S. nuclear waste, then a day later clarified that his agency has made no decisions on any potential locations. In successive budget hearings before House and Senate Appropriations committees, though, Perry left no […]

Lawmakers challenged Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday to commit to resolving the issues that are preventing Congress from taking a definitive stance on the future of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. Perry reaffirmed the Energy Department’s intentions on MOX during a House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee budget hearing, saying […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested Wednesday that material processed through the Energy Department’s suggested dilute and dispose method for eliminating 34 metric tons of excess weapon-usable plutonium could potentially be stored somewhere other than the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The administration is pushing for termination of the Mixed Oxide Fuel […]

The Department of Energy intends to more than double funding in fiscal 2018 for work on the new permanent ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, according to the detailed budget justification released this week for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Airflow at the transuranic waste storage mine was reduced drastically […]

Twenty-six containers of transuranic waste shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for disposal years ago might not be buried there until 2018, the Energy Department disclosed on June 9 in a regulatory filing. Hundreds of containers of transuranic waste — radioactively contaminated material and equipment produced by Cold War nuclear weapons programs — were […]

Bruce Covert has officially taken over as president and project manager of Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), the prime contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, DOE announced Monday. Covert replaces Philip Breidenbach, who oversaw the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s (WIPP) recovery since 2015 and will return to one of NWP’s […]

The contractor building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, locked in a dispute with the federal government over the project’s future, argued the Energy Department’s failure to negotiate a contract modification “in good faith” is costing the company money. On June 1, the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals denied CB&I AREVA […]

CAST Specialty Transportation will haul transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant over the next five years under a potentially $112 million contract announced by the Energy Department Thursday. Under the deal, an indefinite-quantity, indefinite-delivery contract using firm fixed-price task orders, CAST “will provide facilities, personnel, and equipment to operate a local terminal within […]

Fluor Idaho sent an improperly sealed container of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant last month, but inspectors at that New Mexico disposal facility caught the mistake, according to a public notice from the Energy Department. The waste, shipped to WIPP May 10 in a TRUPACT-II container that can hold around 1.5 cubic […]

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) this week told the head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management that President Donald Trump did not propose a large enough 2018 budget for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). WIPP, the nation’s only deep-underground disposal facility for the radioactively contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste, would […]

The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal sustains its predecessor’s plan to terminate the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s $13.9 billion budget proposal includes $1.8 billion for the defense nuclear nonproliferation account, of which $279 million would go toward nonproliferation construction – a […]

The Energy Department shipped about two shipments a week of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in April, meeting the throughput target the agency set for itself in the mine’s first month of relatively normal operations in three years. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, N.M., reopened in January after a […]

The Energy Department shipped about two shipments a week of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in April, meeting the throughput target the agency set for itself in the mine’s first month of relatively normal operations in three years. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, N.M., reopened in January after a […]

Workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on Wednesday morning sent the first barrel of potentially explosive nitrate-salt waste to the building where it will be cleaned up and prepared for eventual disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a source in New Mexico said. Stephen Hoffman, deputy manager of the agency’s Environmental Management Los […]

The Energy Department said its effort to clean up potentially explosive transuranic waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was slowed again last week after the site’s contractor discovered a possible crack in a machine vital to the project. On May 8, workers at the lab’s Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership President Phil Breidenbach is set to depart after two years of shepherding the company’s drive to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and the Energy Department is sending him away with a final set of good marks in the contractor's latest annual review. Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) nabbed $11.3 million in award […]

The Energy Department has relaunched a database that lets the public see what kind of nuclear waste the agency is burying at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, and when. The Waste Data System/WIPP Waste Information System went live again recently without any formal announcement by DOE. The system allows the public […]