The New Mexico Environment Department has given the U.S. Energy Department the OK to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), removing one of the last major hurdles to resuming transuranic waste disposal at the site after a nearly three-year shutdown.
In doing so, the state mandated that DOE and WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) begin burying some of the waste marooned above ground at the site in 2014 no later than June.
If DOE and NWP cannot resume disposal operations by then, “the Permittees shall request an extension of time in accordance with its Permit no later than June 16, 2017,” Kathryn Roberts, director of the department’s Resource Protection Division, wrote in a Dec. 16 letter to Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, and Philip Breidenbach, NWP president and project manager.
The state agency issued the operating permit DOE and NWP require under federal law to operate the deep-underground repository.
WIPP, the nation’s only permanent disposal facility for the radioactively contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste, has been shuttered since a February 2014 underground radiation release and earlier, unrelated underground fire.
DOE and NWP are working to reopen WIPP by year’s end but must first fix 16 remaining punch-list items agency experts from outside of WIPP discovered during a two-week operational readiness review that wrapped up earlier this month. DOE headquarters in Washington must approve whatever fixes the local field office and NWP propose.
The Department of Energy has said the first priority for waste disposal upon WIPP’s reopening would be waste stored at the site’s surface. It is expected to take two or three months to begin accepting shipments of waste from other facilities in the DOE complex.
