Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

The Energy Department could develop a new mobile waste-treatment unit to decontaminate more than 70 barrels of potentially explosive nuclear waste stored at a private contractor in Texas, a source in New Mexico said Tuesday. The 70 barrels, which contain a potentially explosive combination of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts and organic kitty litter, represent the greater part of […]

The Energy Department’s National TRU Program convenes a two-day meeting tomorrow in Carlsbad, N.M., with major decisions looming regarding restarting transuranic waste shipments to the nearby Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The meeting will take place at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, some 40 miles west by road from WIPP: the country’s only permanent deep-underground disposal […]

Nuclear-cleanup sites across the country might learn next week when they may resume shipping radioactively contaminated material and equipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Officials from cleanup sites overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are expected to gather at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Feb. 7-8 for […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday. After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE […]

Nuclear-cleanup sites across the country might learn next week when they may resume shipping radioactively contaminated material and equipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Officials from cleanup sites overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are expected to gather at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Feb. 7-8 for […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday. After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it will not penalize private contractor Waste Control Specialists for moving potentially explosive barrels of federally owned nuclear waste without the proper authorization in 2014. In June 2014, in apparent violation of an NRC order, Waste Control Specialists moved 73 containers of transuranic nitrate-salt waste generated by weapons programs at […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it will not penalize private contractor Waste Control Specialists for moving potentially explosive barrels of federally owned nuclear waste without the proper authorization in 2014. In June 2014, in apparent violation of an NRC order, Waste Control Specialists moved 73 containers of transuranic nitrate-salt waste generated by weapons programs at […]

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up to date on news affecting Department of Energy […]

The Energy Department is likely next year to miss another major nuclear waste removal milestone set in its 1995 settlement agreement with the state of Idaho. Under the agreement, DOE committed to remove from the Idaho National Laboratory site some 65,000 cubic meters of stored transuranic waste by the end of 2018. But limited operations […]

The Trump administration will take a hard look at the Energy Department’s budget for legacy nuclear waste cleanup, Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry said Thursday during his Senate confirmation hearing. “[P]rioritizing the funding and managing that funding in an appropriate way to clean up these waste sites is going to be very, very high on the priority […]

CARLSBAD, N.M. — Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday put the incoming Donald Trump administration on notice that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) ― the nation’s only deep-underground nuclear waste disposal site ― is too important to fail. Less than two weeks before the president who nominated him leaves office, Moniz headlined a group […]

CARLSBAD, N.M. — Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday put the incoming Donald Trump administration on notice that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) ― the nation’s only deep-underground nuclear waste disposal site ― is too important to fail. Less than two weeks before the president who nominated him leaves office, Moniz headlined a group […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico has completed construction of its Transuranic Waste Facility (TWF) and the readiness process has begun, an individual familiar with the project said this week. The facility is expected to begin receiving waste by next spring or summer. The facility is intended for storage of newly generated […]

South Carolina has hit the restart button on a multimillion-dollar fine over a missed plutonium disposition deadline at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS). A 2003 agreement between the state and DOE requires the federal government to process 1 metric ton of plutonium at SRS through the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), […]

Jeffrey Carswell has been promoted to deputy manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, putting an end to talk that one of the leading figures in the agency’s years-long drive to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was headed up the road to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carswell — one […]

The recently reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) could be ready to accept new shipments of nuclear waste from across the Energy Department’s nuclear complex by May, under an ambitious schedule being discussed internally in Carlsbad, N.M. For that to happen, WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) must bury transuranic waste marooned above ground at the site’s […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico has completed construction of its Transuranic Waste Facility (TWF) and the readiness process has begun, an individual familiar with the project said this week. The facility is expected to begin receiving waste by next spring or summer. The facility is intended for storage of newly generated […]

Technicians with Nuclear Waste Partnership have moved transuranic waste into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for the first time in nearly three years, the New Mexico Environment Department said late Wednesday in a press release. Closed since February 2014 following an accidental underground radiation release and earlier, unrelated undergound fire, WIPP received Energy Department clearance […]

Jeffrey Carswell has been promoted to deputy manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, putting an end to talk that one of the leading figures in the agency’s years-long drive to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was headed up the road to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carswell — one […]

The Department of Energy announced Friday that it had given approval for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to resume waste storage operations after nearly three years. The initial waste emplacement should be carried out next month following final, limited ground control operations, DOE said. The announcement comes a week after the New […]

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Pendleton, Ore., will conduct “activities to ensure the safe transportation” of nuclear waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico under a five-year, $375,000 cooperative agreement with the Energy Department. DOE announced the arrangement in a press release Monday. The agreement will help the […]

The New Mexico Environment Department has given the U.S. Energy Department the OK to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), removing one of the last major hurdles to resuming transuranic waste disposal at the site after a nearly three-year shutdown. In doing so, the state mandated that DOE and WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) begin […]

Western states must be given a say in any decisions to establish an interim storage facility for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel within their borders, the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) said in a new policy resolution this week. “In the event that centralized interim storage, either private or federal, is deemed necessary, no such […]

The Energy Department will not commit to reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) by Dec. 31, an agency official told local stakeholders Thursday. “Our goal, based on everything we know, continues to be December,” Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a town hall meeting webcast from Carlsbad, N.M., some 40 miles […]

New Mexico state regulators have completed a critical review of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, but have yet to disclose the results. “Once our inspectors have compiled their observations, we will formally notify WIPP of the results of the inspections,” New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary Butch tongate said in a press […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has processed 2 kilograms of plutonium since beginning its program in September to permanently dispose of 6 metric tons of excess non-pit material, according to DOE. The site said Sept. 30 its personnel had begun downblending the material at the site’s K Area Complex. After dilution, […]

The Energy Department is expected to announce Thursday whether the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is ready to reopen its doors for nuclear-waste disposal after a nearly three-year pause. DOE finished its final operational readiness review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) earlier this month. The two-week checkup was designed to gauge whether contractor Nuclear […]

The Energy Department’s final review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s recovery effort uncovered 21 punch-list items the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership must address before the mine can reopen after its nearly three-year pause. In addition to those 21 so-called corrective actions, DOE prescribed 15 fixes that the local field […]

Vienna – The United States and Russia have not held any discussions about resuming full implementation of the bilateral plutonium elimination agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended in early October, a senior U.S. State Department official said here Wednesday. Thomas Countryman, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an […]