Since it resumed receiving transuranic waste again last April, the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., has received 130 shipments from DOE-approved generator sites as of Dec. 15, 2017.
That is the most recent date for which shipment data is publicly available. During its first 36 weeks of operation since reopening, WIPP averaged 3.6 shipments per week.
WIPP is the nation’s only underground disposal site for transuranic waste. It was effectively offline for nearly three years following an underground fire and radiological release in February 2014.
Toward the end of 2017, WIPP was averaging between five and six shipments per week. A brief review of the public data indicates that nearly two-thirds of the 2017 shipments disclosed so far, 86 of them, came from the Idaho National Laboratory. All of the other generator sites, including the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, were below 20.
The disposal facility will not receive waste during a maintenance outage scheduled for roughly Jan. 15-26, according to information presented at the WIPP Town Hall meeting in December. Work to be conducted during the outage includes applying a new epoxy coating to a floor in the above-ground Waste Handling Building and doing electrical work that can only be done while the power is off.
There was still no word as of Tuesday on whether WIPP has resumed its much-anticipated salt mining operations to carve out additional underground storage space, and if these operations will also be suspended during the maintenance outage.
