After various problems hamstrung the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for most of August and September, the disposal facility only took in three shipments of transuranic waste last month, all of which arrived Sept. 30.
A combination of problematic underground conditions and a brief uptick in COVID-19 cases prompted DOE and prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership to temporarily halt shipments for much of the two-month period. Only seven shipments arrived at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant( WIPP) in August and then three in September, according to the public website for the disposal facility.
The problems, noted in staff reports filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, were addressed by late September and shipments restarted at the end of the month. WIPP received one shipment from the Idaho National Laboratory and two from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on Sept. 30.
WIPP logged the August and September numbers right as it appeared the mine might be recovering its pre-pandemic momentum. The only deep-underground transuranic waste repository in the nation took in 41 shipments in July. Altogether, that makes for a total of 149 shipments during the first three-quarters of 2021: slightly better than the 142 recorded in the first nine months of 2020, year one of the pandemic, when the facility reduced its disposal operations.
On the upside for DOE, WIPP promptly exceeded its monthly total for September on Friday Oct. 1 when four shipments arrived from the Idaho lab.
In 2018, WIPP disposed of 311 shipments of waste, its highest total since a February 2014 underground radiation leak forced the facility offline for about three years. DOE hopes to return WIPP to pre-accident emplacement levels that could hit 700 per year after 2025, when the new Safety Significant Confined Ventilation System is supposed to become operational.
In April, the prime contractor retained The Industrial Co., a Kiewit affiliate, as the replacement subcontract to finish building the new ventilation system after the original sub was terminated in August 2020.
The new ventilation system is meant to triple underground airflow and allow simultaneous mining, maintenance and waste disposal.
