PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas; the Idaho National Laboratory, and the Savannah River National Laboratory, a senior DOE official said here Monday.
DOE has not yet decided which of those three will go first, but all are ahead of the Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national laboratories, Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a panel discussion here at the annual Waste Management Symposium.
“The first group will be WCS [Waste Control Specialists] in Texas, Idaho, Savannah River will be the first couple months of shipments,” Shrader said. “Then, eventually, we’ll move on to Oak Ridge and then Los Alamos will be the next.”
All five of these sites were on a shipping shortlist DOE released late last month. At the time, the agency declined to say which site, or even group of sites, would be first to ship their transuranic waste to the WIPP. The department is targeting a total of about 130 shipments of waste to WIPP from these five sites from April to January — good for a shipping rate of two to three a week, Shrader said.
DOE currently buries two shipments of waste at WIPP each week. It takes about six hours to place each shipment safely in the deep underground salt mine, Shrader said. All of the shipments that have gone underground since the mine’s Jan. 4 reopening were left above ground at the site’s Waste Handling Building following 2014’s underground radiation release and earlier, unrelated mine fire.
Meanwhile, a key figure in DOE’s recovery from those accidents has officially left WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership. Jim Blankenhorn, WIPP recovery manager since 2014, left his post the week of Feb. 27, Shrader told the audience here.
After the panel, Blankenhorn, an employee of NWP parent AECOM, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing he had returned to his employer to mull his next move.
“I’d prefer to stay in the U.S.,” Blankenhorn said.
