Despite a shortfall so far compared with the agency’s goals for 2021, disposing of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory continues to be a high priority for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a federal manager told the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee Wednesday.
The federal agency had projected 80 shipments of waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) from Los Alamos during 2021, but as of July 5 there have only been 23, Reinhard Knerr, the manager, of DOE Carlsbad Field Office said in a slide presentation to the panel.
Shipments to the underground disposal facility from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) operations at Los Alamos only resumed earlier this month after a Feb. 26 incident where Technical Area-55 Plutonium Facility-4 was evacuated when sparks flew from a drum that being packed for shipment to WIPP.
Los Alamos is scheduled for two shipments per week to WIPP and there is a backlog of nine-to-12 weeks’ worth of waste already certified for shipment to the salt mine, Knerr said in his presentation.
Both the NNSA and the DOE Office of Environmental Management are sending waste to WIPP using the same Radioassay and Nondestructive Testing facility at Los Alamos, Knerr said. It is a collaborative project that began last fall, DOE has said.
Los Alamos remains a key shipper to WIPP along with the Idaho National Laboratory, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
This week, WIPP is receiving 10 shipments, including six from Idaho, Knerr said in the presentation, adding that the goal is for the facility to gradually increase from 10 shipments to 17 shipments per week in 2023, which would be similar to pre-2014 levels. In February 2014 a drum from Los Alamos leaked radiation into the WIPP underground, forcing the facility out of service for about three years.
The current 10-year state permit for WIPP, which technically expired in December, is still valid and enforceable, said Christopher Catechis, the New Mexico Environment Department’s acting Resource Protection Division director, in his presentation. A technical review of a new one is underway and a “Final decision from [the New Mexico Environment Department] Secretary [is] anticipated [in] Fall 2021.”
