WIPP shipment rates gradually rebounding, GAO finds

The Department of Energy’s underground disposal site for defense-related transuranic waste is still well behind its shipment rate from before a major accident in 2014, but things are gradually rebounding, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“According to DOE officials, WIPP [the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.] had been receiving as many as 36 waste shipments per week prior to the accident in 2014,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a June report about the site’s infrastructure.  

In February, 2014, a drum of transuranic waste ruptured in the WIPP underground, damaged parts of the salt mine and basically forced the facility offline for about three years.

“When operations resumed in 2017, the number of shipments was reduced to eight to 10 per week,” GAO said in its recent report. “By 2022, waste shipments increased to 14 per week, and in 2024 DOE reported that WIPP was at approximately 44 percent of its statutory capacity for transuranic waste disposal.”

WIPP officials said recently, the disposal site can accept as many as 17 shipments a week under its current operational standards.

“According to DOE officials, WIPP’s waste shipment rate was reduced because the underground ventilation system was running in filtration mode—a much lower air ventilation rate than the unfiltered mode—due to the contamination in the underground from the 2014 WIPP radiological accident,” GAO said in the report. “Under these filtration conditions, work activities, such as waste disposal, are reduced.”

Work crews have finished construction and are testing the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, which is supposed to triple WIPP’s underground airflow.

This will allow for simultaneous salt mining, maintenance, and waste disposal operations—something WIPP has been unable to do since the 2014 accident, GAO said.