The Department of Energy and a contractor await permission from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to return a problem transuranic waste container, now in a parking lot at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, back to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, managers in Carlsbad, N.M., said recently.
The issue came up during a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Community Forum March 23, a recording of which is now available online.
In preparing the container for disposal in the underground salt mine, WIPP workers last summer found the inner containment vessel “potentially contaminated” with airborne plutonium-238 and americium-241, according to a Feb. 15 letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The letter and accompanying material were shared Monday by an NRC spokesperson.
An NRC spokesperson said via email Monday the agency has not ruled on the request, but has asked DOE for more information. DOE and its contractor can also request an additional extension of time from the state by filing by May 1, according to the New Mexico documents.
Because of potential contamination, the container cannot be emplaced at WIPP in its current state, but neither can it go back to the Savannah River Site because the transportation certification has expired, WIPP bosses said March 23.
“We do not have a shipment date,” for returning the loaded container of contact-handled transuranic waste back to Savannah River, said Mark Bollinger, DOE’s acting manager for the Carlsbad field office. Bollinger was responding to an inquiry from Don Hancock, the nuclear waste safety program director at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.
“It’s the kind of situation that shouldn’t have happened,” Hancock said. “There was never a plan to keep a container in the parking lot for seven months and it’s been there for seven months and it’s going to be there for a while longer it looks like.”
The loaded HalfPACT 506 shipping package “reached its five-year maintenance period while in storage at the WIPP facility on September 30, 2022” and is no longer NRC-certified for transport, according to a Nov. 22, 2022 state letter from to DOE and contractor managers at Carlsbad. The letter in which the New Mexico Environment Department granted DOE permission to keep holding the container until May 21, was viewed by Exchange Monitor. A copy of the New Mexico request is here.
“The HalfPACT cannot be returned to the generator storage site without special NRC authorization,” the state said in the November letter. DOE and its new WIPP contractor Salado Isolation Mining, seek one-time authorization to send the problem waste back to Savannah River.
Hancock blamed prior WIPP contractor, the Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, for allowing the container to come to the disposal site so close to its certification expiration. Salado Isolation Mining Contractors President Ken Harrawood said the new contractor learned of the issue during the handover period from the incumbent.
In its filing with the state and federal regulators, DOE said while closed from 2014 until 2017 following an underground radiation leak, transuranic waste was stored on the surface at WIPP for three years.
