The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received at least 23 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. 26 of this year, WIPP had received 157 shipments, according to the WIPP website.
Last month, between Aug. 1 and Aug. 26, WIPP received 10 shipments from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, seven from the Idaho National Laboratory, four 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.
