The Environmental Protection Agency has finished its latest biennial compliance review of the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic waste disposal facility near Carlsbad, N.M., EPA announced Tuesday in a Federal Register notice posted online.
The environmental review, which EPA conducts every two years, covers April 1, 2012, through March 31, 2014. The review ensures that DOE is complying with applicable laws and regulations as required by the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act of 1990: the charter legislation for the underground salt mine that is the only U.S. repository for the radio-contaminated material and equipment known as transuric waste.
The latest biennial compliance review took longer than usual because of the 2014 accidents — an accidental underground radiation release and unrelated underground fire — that have kept the facility closed for more than two years now.
The next biennial compliance review, for the period spanning April 1, 2014, to March 31, 2016, is expected to begin by Oct. 31. DOE will kick off the process with a letter to EPA asserting the Energy Department complied with applicable laws and regulations in the two-year period, according to federal law.
These two-year reviews are distinct from an EPA-led WIPP recertification that is underway. Every five years, EPA must recertify WIPP to receive transuranic waste. DOE last applied for recertification on March 26, 2014. A mandatory public comment period on DOE’s application closed Oct. 31, 2015, and EPA has yet to issue a decision on the application.
An EPA spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment Tuesday.
