The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 30 shipments of transuranic waste during June, making it one of the busiest disposal months since the COVID-19 pandemic reduced in-person operations at DOE nuclear sites in March 2020.

Of the 30 shipments last month recorded on a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) website, 21 came from the Idaho National Laboratory, seven from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, one from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and one from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Last month’s figure of 30 is more than the 26 that arrived at the underground salt mine for disposal in June 2021. Since January, WIPP has received 97 shipments, narrowly eclipsing the 96 during the first half of 2021, according to the website.   

Looking over the 2022 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, 2021, WIPP has received 158 shipments through the first three-quarters of the fiscal year. That figure is up from the 146 taken in during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year.

WIPP went offline about three years after a February 2014 underground radiation leak that contaminated parts of the underground and the disposal site has yet to come close to equaling the 700-to-800 annual shipments received in years before the accident, the DOE’s top boss in Carlsbad, N.M. recently told a recent town hall gathering.

The DOE announced last week it has selected a Bechtel National-led joint venture to be the next manager of WIPP, to succeed Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership.