The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., anticipates receiving about 300 shipments during the 12 months from February 2018 and February 2019.
That’s according to slides shared by Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader at the Waste Management Symposium last month in Phoenix, Ariz.
During this period, DOE and WIPP management contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership expect half (150) of the shipments will come from the Idaho National Laboratory and another 90 will be sourced from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Other shippers are expected to include Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (25); Savannah River Site in South Carolina (20); the Waste Control Specialists site in Texas (10) and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
After a pair of accidents in February 2014 forced WIPP offline for nearly three years, the underground disposal site resumed taking shipments of off-site transuranic waste in April 2017. It received 133 shipments during its almost nine months of operation in 2017.
In terms of federal fiscal years, WIPP is expected to receive roughly 250 shipments in fiscal 2018, which ends Sept. 30. It expects to take in 294 shipments in fiscal 2019 and 389 in fiscal 2020. Shipments should remain relatively flat, at 383, before taking a big jump in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.
By then WIPP expects to have its new permanent ventilation system installed, allowing waste shipments to increase to 622 in fiscal 2022 and 736 in fiscal 2023.
