The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 32 shipments of transuranic waste during February, according to the facility’s public website.
The latest monthly figure shows progress over the prior year shipment period, but suggests DOE still must increase its rate over a sustained period to reach the annual levels the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) hit prior to a 2014 radiological accident.
The vast majority of the month’s shipments, 23, originated from the Idaho National Laboratory. Five came from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, two came from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and two from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
It generally takes a couple of weeks for shipments to show up on the website. The most recent shipment was recorded at WIPP on Feb. 28, based on a Wednesday afternoon check of the website.
February marks the third-straight month of 30-plus shipments as 31 shipments arrived during January, which followed 53 in December. The 63 shipments received during January and February dwarfs the 18 logged during the first two months of 2022, according to the website.
After a February 2014 underground radiation leak contaminated parts of the salt mine and closed WIPP for about three years, the annual disposal tally has been less than half of pre-accident levels. In the bustling 2013 calendar year, WIPP received 724 shipments.
At the same time, WIPP’s best calendar year performance since 2017 has been only 311 in 2018. But managers for DOE’s Carlsbad field office and newly-installed prime, Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, hope that’s changing.
WIPP managers said recently at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix that the salt mine has regularly disposed of about 14 shipments a week during normal operations.
WIPP personnel emplace waste about 40 weeks per year, so maintaining a 14-shipment-per week pace, would translate to 560 shipments annually. If the salt mine meets the current goal of maintaining 17 per week, it would amount to 680 over the course of a year.
During the first five months of fiscal 2023, which started Oct. 1, WIPP has received 160 shipments, according to public records. That is essentially double the 79 shipments received during the first five months of fiscal 2022. If this recent pace of roughly 32 shipments monthly continues over 12-months, it would come out to 384 – far short of what DOE is targeting but better than the recent past.
The DOE pins its hopes on the recent startup of disposal in Panel 8, which is free of the contamination the 2014 accident left in Panel 7, as well as infrastructure projects, such as a new ventilation system expected to triple underground airflow when operational in 2026.
