New TRU Milestones In The Works
WC Monitor
1/9/2015
The state of Tennessee is on the verge of approving a set of extended milestones for processing and disposing of the Department of Energy’s transuranic waste in Oak Ridge because of the inability to ship the material to the troubled Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Kelly Brockman, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said DOE requested the extensions on Dec. 5 as part of the annual update on the Oak Ridge Site Treatment Plan. “TDEC is reviewing the request and anticipates acceptance of these changes,” Brockmann said via email.
The planned changes include deferring physical preparation of 10 cubic meters of contact-handled TRU waste from March 31, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2018. Processing of the remaining 274 cubic meters of this contact-handled TRU waste will be completed by the current milestone of March 31, 2015. Completion of WIPP certification for 50 percent of the remaining remote-handled TRU waste would be delayed from Sept. 30, 2015 to Dec. 15, 2015. Also to be pushed back is completion of physical preparation of remaining inventory of remote-handled TRU waste, from Sept. 30, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2017.
The WIPP facility has been shut down since February 2014 after a haul truck fire and a radiological release, and the facility is not expected to be fully back up and running until 2019. “The milestones for the contact-handled and remote-handled transuranic debris waste were extended due to DOE’s inability to ship transuranic waste to WIPP,” Brockman said. “Technical and safety considerations associated with processing the 10 cubic meters of contact handled transuranic debris waste resulted in a need to extend the milestone for processing until after WIPP resumes shipments,” she said. Extension of the remote-handled transuranic debris waste was requested due to the limited storage space available at the processing facility in Oak Ridge, she said.
