Most Americans don’t like the way 2020 is playing out, at least if social media posts are any guide, and the first eight months of the year have not gone well for productivity at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
There have been 121 shipments from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31 of this year. That compares with 225 from the first eight months of 2019.
The underground disposal facility for transuranic waste averaged emplacement of slightly more than 28 shipments per month during the first two-thirds of 2019. However, during the same period in 2020 the average is just over 15 shipments per month.
The falloff is due to a confluence of factors according to the site’s Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, prime contractor. The contractor cites harsh winter weather and a prolonged maintenance outage during the first quarter. Then of course there is the coronavirus pandemic that caused DOE to dramatically scale back work at the Waste Isolation Pilot plant (WIPP) and other nuclear cleanup operations from late March to late May.
The underground salt mine site continues to experience delays ramping up to full throughput because of COVID-19, according to documents filed recently with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
“By the end of August some of the personnel in quarantine [because of potential exposure to the virus] had been cleared and returned to the site, and WIPP started to receive waste again at an average rate of five shipments per week,” according to a board staff report dated Sept. 4. WIPP’s Amentum-led prime contractor, however, started segregating crews onsite “to minimize cross-over and to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission.”
Of the 2020 shipments through the first eight months of this year, 73 came from the Idaho National Laboratory, 38 from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and 10 from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
There were 12 shipments to WIPP during August. Eight from Idaho and four from Los Alamos.