SUMMERLIN, NEV. — With the promise of a contamination-free underground panel to work in, and looming infrastructure upgrades, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico could triple the number of waste shipments it takes in by 2024, compared with 2021, a federal official said Thursday.
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) crews should finish filling up Panel 7 at underground salt mine in either July or August, and will then shift over to the newly-mined Panel 8 for disposal, Mark Bollinger, the Department of Energy’s deputy manager of its Carlsbad Field Office said at the annual conference hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications.
Because the underground radiation leak of February 2014, which idled the transuranic waste disposal facility for nearly three years, contaminated parts of Panel 7, workers there have to wear more personal protective gear than will be necessary in Panel 8, DOE officials have said.
In addition, “we have some projects coming online that will allow us to mine and emplace waste at the same time,” Bollinger said. Chief among them will be the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, which should triple underground airflow to about 540,000 cubic feet per minute. WIPP’s prime Nuclear Waste Partnership terminated the initial subcontractor in charge of building the ventilation project, which WIPP managers hope to see in operation by 2026.
During the 2021 calendar year, WIPP received 210 shipments and, as of May 25, has received 63 shipments, according to the site’s public webpage.
But the new panel, the ventilation upgrade and a new utility shaft, and receding of the COVID-19 pandemic should help turn things around, Bollinger said. It is possible WIPP “can get to a level of roughly 650 shipments a year, in the 2024 timeframe,” Bollinger said.
