Energy Department Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Tuesday it could take an additional year to secure New Mexico approval to change the way the volume of transuranic waste is counted for underground disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The New Mexico Environment Department said June 1 it plans a more extensive Class 3 review of the site permit modification sought by DOE, rather than treating it as a Class 2 modification.
The next step is for NMED to send DOE a technical incompleteness determination, Shrader said, without discussing details of that document. The Energy Department and WIPP management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership would then respond to the state agency, which would issue a draft permit. The draft permit would entail a minimum 45-day comment period. There could eventually be an administrative hearing and a report by a state public hearings officer.
The Energy Department and NWP received the document on Wednesday and are reviewing it.
Not counting the empty space between drums inside a waste container, as DOE prefers, would mathematically reduce the amount of waste now stored at WIPP by about 30 percent for purposes of the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act. There is a strong argument under the act that “waste meant waste,” not air or overpack material, Shrader said.
Shrader gave this update to a meeting of a National Academies panel in California studying whether WIPP is a viable disposal option for downblended plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The panel is evaluating WIPP following the Energy Department’s announced cancellation of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), which is being built at Savannah River to convert 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. The so-called dilute-and-dispose option would send the processed material eventually to WIPP in TRU waste form.
“At the end of the day what we take is defense transuranic waste,” Shrader said. The material will have to be downblended to TRU waste form in order to meet the facility’s disposal criteria, he noted.
No one really knows yet when WIPP will conclude its TRU waste disposal operations, Shrader said. For planning purposes, WIPP is currently formally projected to close in 2033, although that date will change and be closer to 2050, he added.
The volume calibration won’t change the fact WIPP needs to develop more storage panels, beyond the currently approved 10 approved by New Mexico, within a few years to avoid a disruption in waste shipments from other DOE sites, Shrader said.
Crews are currently emplacing waste in Panel 7, and mining salt from Panel 8 in order to prepare it for waste disposal in 2021. Due to various physical problems, including rock falls, the Energy Department probably will not dispose of waste in Panels 9 and 10, Shrader said. Eventually, an additional three-to-six underground panels could be developed.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of underground space for additional panels at the WIPP facility, Shrader said.
