The head of the Department of Energy field office overseeing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., expects the facility to finish fiscal 2022 with 225 shipments of transuranic waste, short of its target of 299.
As of Aug. 29, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has received 217 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste for the fiscal year that ends Friday Sept. 30, Reinhard Knerr, Carlsbad field office manager, told the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Tuesday.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has sent almost 1,700 shipments to WIPP since 2001, including 15 shipments this fiscal year, Knerr said.
WIPP is approaching its pre-COVID-19 shipping rates from 2019, Knerr said. WIPP is also “three or four weeks away” from starting waste disposal in Panel 8. When that occurs workers will “no longer have to go into a radiological zone,” for waste disposal.
Panel 7, where disposal is winding down, was contaminated as a result of a February 2014 underground radiation leak that resulted when a drum from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico overheated and ruptured.
Within the next two years, Knerr hopes WIPP can return to its 20-year average of almost 600 shipments per year.
The Carlsbad manager also said construction of the $490-million Safety Significant Confined Ventilation System is 65% complete and should be finished in 2025. The project should triple underground airflow to 540,000 cubic feet per minute and in the process enable maintenance, salt mining and waste disposal to occur simultaneously underground.
Knerr said WIPP will continue accepting waste at least through 2050, although DOE’s Office of Environmental Management will still be generating transuranic waste, including radiologically contaminated soil, rags, clothes and equipment, until probably 2085.
The New Mexico Environment Department could issue DOE’s draft 10-year permit renewal application for WIPP for public comment next month, Knerr said.
