May 29, 2014

OAK RIDGE TRU WORK CONTINUES DURING WIPP SHUTDOWN, BUT RH MAY BE ISSUE

By ExchangeMonitor

While Oak Ridge’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center will continue processing contact-handled waste during the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant shutdown, storage space for remote-handled waste may become an issue, a DOE official said yesterday. While TWPC operations are continuing during the WIPP suspension, storage of processed and packaged waste at Oak Ridge is the challenge. “With CH waste we can process that, package it and move it to the lab,” DOE Oak Ridge cleanup Manager Mark Whitney said at a Congressional Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Briefing.

Though Oak Ridge National Laboratory has an area for storing contact-handled waste, it can not store remote-handled waste. “However, with RH we have limitations there on site and we can really only hold 14 canisters of the RH material at TWPC. “Then we have a really lack of ability and infrastructure to store it anywhere else on site,” Whitney said. “We are looking right now at options… We think that even a two-year suspension, we would still be able to make progress on CH. The RH would be an issue.”

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