The new method used by the U.S. Energy Department to calculate waste-disposal volumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is significantly increasing the amount of radioactive material that can be interred, an advocacy group says.
Last December, the New Mexico Environment Department approved a modification to DOE’s hazardous waste permit for the underground facility for transuranic waste disposal, allowing it to stop calculating volume under the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act based upon the outermost container. That is somewhat akin to measuring FedEx packages on the size of the gift inside rather than the outer package.
As of Sept. 21, 2019, just over 97,000 cubic meters of waste has been emplaced at WIPP since operations began in 1999, if calculated on the outer container, according to Don Hancock, administrator of the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center. When measured the inner container, the total drops by roughly 29% to less than 69,000 cubic meters, according to comments Hancock filed Sept. 30 on the Energy Department’s draft five-year strategic plan for WIPP.
The Energy Department hopes to operate WIPP until 2050.
The Southwest Research and Information Center, along with another advocacy group, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, challenged the new accounting method before the New Mexico Court of Appeals in January. After the parties’ unsuccessful attempt at mediation, the lawsuit is now expected to head to trial, although the court had not issued a briefing schedule as of last week.
The amount of waste received at WIPP over two decades, as of Sept. 21, is the result of 12,589 shipments. “Thus, by outer container volume shipments average 7.71 cubic meters and by inner container volume, shipments average 5.46 cubic meters,” Hancock said.
The Southwest Research and Information Center said the final DOE strategic plan should give waste figures based both upon the outer container and inner container calculations. The Energy Department has not said when exactly it plans to publish the final version of the plan.
