The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 25 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during August, according to the public website.
That’s far more than the seven received at the underground salt mine during August 2021. The increased number of shipments during the past month means the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is now ahead of last year’s pace of 146 shipments during the first eight months of calendar year 2021.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of this year, WIPP had received 159 shipments, according to the WIPP website.
From a fiscal year perspective, WIPP has received 220 shipments from Oct. 1, 2021 through Aug. 31 of this year. The 2022 fiscal year ends Sept. 30, so WIPP is averaging about 20 shipments per month this budget year. The facility took in 196 shipments during the first 11 months of fiscal 2021.
Last month, WIPP received 11 shipments from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, seven from the Idaho National Laboratory, five from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and two from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
There is a lag time of about two weeks before shipments are posted on the DOE public website for WIPP.
WIPP is currently managed by prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, with partners Amentum and BWX Technologies. In July, the DOE awarded a new management contract to a Bechtel entity. That award was subsequently challenged before the Government Accountability Office by two bid protesters, one led by Westinghouse and another by Huntington Ingalls Industries, the parent of Newport News Nuclear. The government watchdog expects to rule on the protests in early November.
