As of Dec. 8, the New Mexico Environment Department has 37 pages of emails with comments on the Department of Energy’s plan to define legacy transuranic waste for disposal at DOE’s deep underground disposal site near Carlsbad, N.M.
Dec. 8 is roughly mid-way in the public comment period that runs through Jan. 3, on DOE’s legacy transuranic waste disposal plan for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
Most early comments are from individuals not organizations, but follow a similar theme. Some commenters say the plan filed by DOE and its contractor on Nov. 4 is inadequate and does not do enough to protect New Mexicans from old defense-related transuranic waste from the agency’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The plan submitted by DOE and its Bechtel-led WIPP prime Salado Isolation Mining Contractors would give legacy waste priority at the planned Panel 12, although non-legacy waste could still go into other sections of WIPP. The WIPP plan excludes waste generated from upcoming plutonium pit production and some pre-1970 waste from the legacy designation.
A report published this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said resumption of plutonium pit production by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will account for perhaps two-thirds of the transuranic waste headed to WIPP after 2033. The pit production might require “up to three additional panels at WIPP” beyond Panels 11 and 12.
Transuranic waste from pits and surplus plutonium disposition will go into WIPP’s Panel 11 when it opens in fiscal 2026, Nathan Anderson, a GAO natural resources director who oversaw the report, said in a Wednesday email. If Panel 12 is set aside for legacy waste, it could result in the Office of Environmental Management “emplacing waste in both Panels 11 and 12 simultaneously if they can manage it.”
As for legacy waste, the antinuclear Southwest Research and Information Center, like most other such citizen groups in the state, said it plans to file detailed comments by Jan. 3. However, it told DOE in early November about some missing Internet links in the legacy proposal filed by DOE. An administrator with the center, Don Hancock, asked DOE Nov. 7 to fix that right away.
WIPP’s latest 10-year hazardous waste permit from the state called upon DOE to define and give priority to legacy waste, especially legacy waste in New Mexico. The permit also called on DOE to file an annual report about steps being taken to identify alternate transuranic waste sites outside New Mexico that could replace WIPP one day.
In response to a Monday email from Exchange Monitor, Hancock said “among the reasons the Legacy Plan is inadequate is that it doesn’t provide that any waste would be emplaced in that additional repository in another state.”
