The aftermath of the February 2014 radiation release that closed the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for almost three years is the common thread between two recent developments at the nation’s only underground repository for transuranic waste.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking comments through April 19 on whether to sign off on the updated transuranic waste characterization program at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. An affirmative decision could lead to AMWTP again shipping newly generated TRU waste to WIPP.
It’s part of an effort to ensure TRU waste from AMWTP undergoes sufficient review to pass muster with tightened waste acceptance safeguards at WIPP since the radiation incident.
Second, WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership acknowledged this week it plans to close areas in the south end of its underground disposal mine near the location where a waste container blew open and spread radiation into the disposal space. This is one of the aspects of WIPP’s ongoing permit modification plan being reviewed by the New Mexico Environment Department, NWP spokesman Donavan Mager said Thursday.
In order to reduce potential risk to workers, DOE decided in 2016 to close the south end near the accident site, Mager said in an email. The area encompasses six filled waste disposal panels and supporting access areas. They will be closed with metal bulkheads and, in some cases, salt that has been mined to create new disposal rooms. It not a major project and will be funded through normal operating expenses, the spokesperson said.
In addition to preventing worker access, the closure would also eliminate the need for maintenance and ventilation of the affected area, Mager said. The waste emplacement operation won’t run out of space, “because there is lots of salt to mine down there,” Mager said.
Energy Department criteria for accepting waste shipments at WIPP have been overhauled to reduce the chances of recurrence of the February 2014 incident. The characterization program is designed to ensure TRU waste is safely packaged and ready for disposal before it arrives at WIPP.
The EPA approved the AMWTP waste characterization program in October 2006. But the June 2017 changes to DOE’s acceptance standards for transuranic waste at WIPP now require information on the chemical contents of material headed to WIPP. The revisions also require confirmation the waste has been rendered chemically inert. The EPA believes improvements implemented by AMWTP bring the waste characterization program up to the toughened WIPP standards.
A three-day EPA baseline inspection in August 2017 found no concerns with the updated waste characterization program at the AMWTP, the agency said in a March 5 Federal Register notice. The EPA’s final approval decision regarding the AMWTP program for characterizing contact-handled TRU waste will be spelled out in a letter to DOE following review of public comments, according to the notice.
The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project was built to treat and package TRU waste shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory in the 1970s and 1980s from the Rocky Flats site in Colorado. Under a 1995 settlement agreement between DOE and Idaho, all the waste must be shipped out of the state by the end of 2018 — 65,000 cubic meters at the time. Most of the amount had already been shipped to WIPP prior to the 2014 accident, although state and federal officials have acknowledged INL might not meet the 2018 deadline.
The current EPA effort is directed toward “newly generated” waste from AMWTP, which shipped TRU waste to WIPP before the 2014 shutdown, said a representative for Idaho Site cleanup contractor Fluor. Since WIPP resumed taking waste in April 2017, all shipments from Idaho to WIPP have been AMWTP waste that was processed and previously certified. The environmental agency must finalize its “baseline approval decision” before the DOE Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, can recertify the AMWTP waste characterization program, the Federal Register notice says. AMWTP must also complete a recertification audit by the state of New Mexico, said the Fluor representative.
WIPP Taking in Roughly 5 Shipments Per Week in Early 2018
Almost two months into 2018, WIPP had through Feb. 21 received 32 shipments of transuranic waste, with two-thirds of them coming from the Idaho National Laboratory.
That represents an average of 4.57 shipments per week over a seven-week period, according to the latest available data. In addition to 22 shipments from INL, Waste Control Specialists in Texas sent seven shipments and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee sent three.
The underground salt mine received 133 shipments of transuranic waste from around the DOE complex during 2017, which exceeded its own internal target.
The Energy Department’s latest budget request indicates the facility hopes to eventually hit 10 shipments per week during the 2018 fiscal year.
During 2013, its last full year of operation, WIPP received 724 shipments, which would translate to almost 14 per week.
