Roughly a quarter of the way through fiscal 2023 the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has received 107 shipments of transuranic waste, about on pace for meeting its 400-shipment target for the fiscal year ending in September, DOE and its contractor told New Mexico lawmakers Tuesday.
There have been 107 shipments to the underground salt mile between Oct. 1, 2022 and Jan. 10, top managers from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) said during a briefing for members of the New Mexico Legislature.
The briefing included the DOE Office of Environmental Management and its contractors from WIPP and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A copy of the presentation was shared with Exchange Monitor. Representatives from outgoing WIPP prime, Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, and the incoming contract, Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, both participated.
There were 235 shipments to WIPP during fiscal 2022, ended Sept. 30, although DOE had hoped for 400 then also. In October, DOE started emplacing waste in the new Panel 8. Unlike the recently-filled Panel 7, Panel 8 is free of contamination from a February 2014 underground radiation leak that knocked WIPP offline for about three years. Workers in Panel 8 need not wear as much protective gear as they did in Panel 7.
There were 76 shipments from Los Alamos, including both Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration waste, in fiscal 2022, according to Tuesday’s presentation to state lawmakers. The fiscal 2023 projection is 80 and there were 29 as of Jan. 10.
The Environmental Management office at Los Alamos is the only DOE field site with an “at-ready agreement” with WIPP, “meaning when we have a shipment ready, WIPP will accept it right away,” DOE’s legacy cleanup boss for the lab, Michael Mikolanis said in his slides.
In addition to continuing to contain a hexavalent chromium plume and finishing remediation along Middle DP Road just outside the Los Alamos federal campus, DOE is digging up corrugated metal pipes from Technical Area 54, which will eventually be prepared and shipped to WIPP, Mikolanis said.
Moving waste off the hill in Los Alamos and to the WIPP site near Carlsbad is an issue that increasingly comes up in public presentations by DOE officials in the past year.
The departing Carlsbad Field Office Manager Reinhard Knerr is “continuing to prioritize” Los Alamos shipments to WIPP, according to the presentation.
