The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is expected to receive 170 shipments of transuranic waste from the Idaho National Laboratory between August 2017 and August 2018, officials said during a WIPP Town Hall on Thursday in the city of Carlsbad.
Idaho will account for nearly two-thirds of the 258 anticipated total shipments to the storage mine during that period, though DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader stressed these are just estimated totals. Relocating the material out has been a priority, as a 1995 settlement agreement with the state government requires DOE to remove all transuranic waste from Idaho by the end of 2018 – though the department has acknowledged it could miss that deadline.
The No. 2 shipper to WIPP during that period will be the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, with 40; the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, with 20; Waste Control Specialists in West Texas, with 18 and the Savannah River Site, with 10.
WIPP resumed taking waste shipments this spring. The underground transuranic waste repository was closed to waste shipments for nearly three years following two accidents in February 2014: a vehicle fire and a radiation release. Officials said during the Town Hall that WIPP has received 68 shipments since operations resumed.