Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., is ready to start measuring underground waste volume through a new method recently approved by the state.
Effective Jan. 20, the contractor will no longer calculate waste, under the 1992 WIPP Land Disposal Act, based on the size of the outer disposal container. The change is allowed under the revised state permit via an order signed in December by the then-head of the New Mexico Environment Department.
“The required policy has been completed,” NWP spokesman Donavan Mager said in an Jan. 23 email. After being shut for a three-week maintenance outage that ended this weekend, the contractor is again accepting waste shipments.
By counting only transuranic waste, and not the empty space between drums or packing material, the retroactive change reduces the amount of material now at WIPP from roughly one-half to one-third of its maximum allowed 176,000 cubic meters. Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) filed a legal challenge against the move earlier this month in the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
The Land Withdrawal Act “does NOT say that there can be more than one way to measure that capacity,” SRIC Administrator Don Hancock said in a Jan. 23 email. Opponents believe they can show the state decision was incorrect as a matter of law.
The legal process at the New Mexico Court of Appeals requires the parties meet with a court-appointed mediator to seek a mutual solution to the dispute, Hancock said. If the mediation does not resolve the matter, then legal briefs are filed.
The notice of appeal was formally docketed Jan. 23 on the state court’s website.
