After being out of service about two months to fix problems with underground hoists, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) resumed taking shipments of defense-related transuranic waste in July, according to publicly-available data.
According to DOE’s public shipment website for WIPP, a couple of waste shipments from the Los Alamos National Laboratory were received at WIPP near Carlsbad, N.M., on July 16. It marked the first transuranic waste shipment to arrive at WIPP from generator sites since May 26, according to the data.
This spring, WIPP management informed the New Mexico Environment Department that the nation’s only underground disposal site for this type of waste needed to suspend burying waste until it could carry out repairs to both the Air Intake Shaft and Salt Handling Shaft hoists.
Bechtel-led prime contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors runs WIPP for the DOE Office of Environmental Management.