The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) recorded 25 transuranic (TRU) waste shipments in March, following an annual maintenance outage that kept it offline since January.
The 25 shipments are the first since the facility accepted 33 shipments in December, and an uptick from March 2024 when WIPP received 13 shipments, according to the site’s receipt database.
The first five shipments this year came on March 3 and included three from Idaho National Lab (INL), and two from Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), about 350 miles north of Carlsbad, N.M. where WIPP is located. All told, INL sent 9 shipments in March, and LANL sent the other 16 to tally the 25 total shipments. The pilot plant typically receives shipments from other DOE facilities, including the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee.
The 16-square-mile Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, managed by Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, is the nation’s only repository for defense-related TRU waste, material contaminated with radioactive elements during nuclear missions. It typically includes protective clothing, tools, rags, equipment, and miscellaneous items contaminated with small amounts of plutonium.
So far, in fiscal 2026, which started October 1, 2025, WIPP has received 128 shipments, with 60 coming from the Idaho lab and 55 from Los Alamos. By comparison, the facility received 107 shipments from October 2024 through March 2025 last fiscal year.
During this year’s annual WIPP outage, crews replaced the core of the waste hoist motor, which is vital to moving people, waste and material more than 2,100-feet underground. The hoist can carry up to 75 workers and 45 tons of waste or equipment, DOE said in a news release. The federal agency expects the 2027 outage to be about six months, so all the underground steel that supports waste hoists can be replaced.
DOE and its WIPP contractor plan to hold a public meeting on March 24 to discuss requested modifications to its hazardous waste facilities permit.