For the first time in more than three years, the Energy Department sent a shipment of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for permanent disposal, the agency announced Monday.
The shipment, from the Idaho National Laboratory, arrived in either the darkness of night or early morning, according to a DOE video that accompanied Monday’s press release on the event. The press release did not specify when the shipment left Idaho, when it arrived at WIPP some 1,200 miles by road southeast of the lab’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex, or what sort of waste the shipment contained.
A DOE spokesperson on Monday declined to answer questions about the shipment.
Based on the video, it appeared the waste arrived from Idaho in a pair of TRUPACT-II shipping containers. Combined, those could hold almost 6 cubic meters of waste, according to DOE.
The Department of Energy plans to accept two new shipments of transuranic waste at WIPP a month, increasing to four shipments by the end of the year, the press release says.
WIPP closed for almost three years after a radiation leak and earlier, unrelated underground fire in February 2014. The mine reopened in December but could not accept new shipments until WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership buried waste marooned above ground at the site’s Waste Handling Building after the accidents.
Meanwhile, DOE is working to certify that all transuranic waste across its nuclear complex meets WIPP’s strict new waste acceptance criteria. One obstacle is figuring out what to do with shipments that contain oxidizing chemicals that could start fires.
After the radiation leak of 2014, which was blamed on an improperly packaged waste shipment that contained combustible material, potentially flammable shipments were banned from WIPP’s underground.
DOE expects it will figure out what to do about the potentially flammable waste shipments this summer, J.R. Stroble, head of the agency’s National TRU Waste Program, said at an industry conference in March.
