The U.S. Energy Department has roughly 6,500 cubic meters of transuranic waste yet to be shipped from the Idaho National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, an agency spokesperson said by email Nov. 15.
That is about 10% of the 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste supposed to move from the lab to WIPP by December 2018 under a 1995 legal settlement between DOE, the state, and the U.S. Navy.
Less than 1,200 cubic meters of the remaining waste still require treatment or packaging prior to being sent to WIPP, the Energy Department spokesperson added. The rest is apparently ready and awaiting shipment to the underground disposal site.
Much of the remaining TRU material is waste from debris, the Energy Department has said. Since WIPP reopened in early 2017, following a three-year outage after an underground radiation leak, the facility has received 723 shipments. About 500 of them came from INL.
Despite the Energy Department missing its December 2018 disposal target under the consent agreement, Idaho Gov. Brad Little and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden agreed Nov. 7 to a framework for waiving state’s prohibition on shipments of spent nuclear fuel to the lab. The state has barred such shipments for years largely for the federal agency’s failure to commence operations of the integrated waste treatment unit (IWTU), which is supposed to convert sodium-bearing waste into a solid form.
The state said DOE has made much progress on both starting up the IWTU and shipping the transuranic waste. The Energy Department said the schedule for moving the last of the TRU from the 1995 deal will depend upon timing of infrastructure upgrades at WIPP, such as a new underground ventilation system.
Some officials have speculated that it could take as long as 10 years, and the supplemental agreement executed this month does not list a target date for completion.
The work is expected to occur at the Accelerated Retrieval Project No. 7 facility within the Radioactive Waste Complex at INL. Cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho is seeking a modification to a state permit that would allow it to commence repackaging drums of sludge waste that has been held at the lab for decades after being generated from sites such as the old Rocky Flats weapons plant in Colorado. This preparation is a key step before it is certified for shipment.
