SUMMERLIN, NEV. — The manager of the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico last week declined to provide a timeline for moving potentially combustible drums of stranded Los Alamos National Laboratory transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from a private site in Texas.
Reinhard Knerr, who manages the DOE Carlsbad office that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) also said despite rising fuel prices, truck transport is still a better deal for moving transuranic (TRU) waste to WIPP than the railroads.
Switching to railroad transportation would involve significant upfront costs, including training communities along the rail routes in potential emergency response issues, Knerr said. The DOE has already laid that groundwork with communities along existing truck haul routes, he said.
As for the 74 remaining waste boxes of Los Alamos waste, stuck at Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in West Texas since 2014, there is a “concerted effort by all parties involved” toward moving the waste to WIPP as soon as possible, Knerr said last week at the Radwaste Summit hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications. The comments on both subjects came in response to questions from conference participants.
The TRU waste has been in limbo at WCS since 2014, when it was discovered the drums had some traits in common with a drum from Los Alamos that overheated, blew open and caused an underground radiation leak at WIPP in February 2014. The accident forced WIPP offline for about three years.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently found continued storage of the potentially-combustible transuranic waste at WCS through December 2024 should not pose significant environmental risk. But the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has pushed for more than two years for DOE to remove the remaining TRU waste.
A commission spokesperson said last week that the Texas agency has not extended its authorization beyond the now-expired May 31 deadline. In an email the spokesperson said he did not know what remedies the state might pursue for DOE’s delays.
The DOE has proposed development of a radiological control enclosure that could be used for preparation of the waste containers for shipment. The enclosure must be big enough to take the lid off a standard waste box, Knerr said.
