The U.S. Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 275 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during the first 10 months of this year, compared to 272 during the same period in 2018.
October is the last full month for which shipment information is available through WIPP’s public database. It shows that the underground site has finally caught up with last year’s waste disposal pace.
The salt mine near the city of Carlsbad only received 115 shipments of transuranic defense waste during the first five months of 2019, down from 138 in the same period of 2018. Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department’s prime contractor for WIPP, chalked this up to inclement weather at the outset of the year, along with a longer-than-usual maintenance outage from January into early February.
By the end of August, WIPP was only seven shipments behind the 2018 pace with 225 – compared to 232 in the first eight months of last year.
The database indicates 219 shipments came to WIPP through October from the Idaho National Laboratory, with the remainder split between the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (27), the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee (23), the Savannah River Site in South Carolina (2), Waste Control Specialists in Texas (2), and the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois (2).
This is the second full year of operation for WIPP since it shut down for nearly three years following an underground radiation leak in February 2014.
