The Energy Department shipped about two shipments a week of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in April, meeting the throughput target the agency set for itself in the mine’s first month of relatively normal operations in three years.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, N.M., reopened in January after a three-year shutdown prompted by an accidental radiological release and unrelated underground fire in 2014. DOE resumed shipping transuranic waste from across its nuclear complex to WIPP early last month, saying it planned to deliver about two shipments a week.
In a small sample of one month, the agency has more or less succeeded, based on data uploaded to its official Waste Data System/WIPP Waste Information System database.
The database shows WIPP received six shipments in April: one in the first full week of the month, two in the second week of the month, two in the third week of the month, and one in the fourth week of the month.
Even if you don’t start the clock until April 7, when a shipment from the Idaho National Laboratory arrived to mark the first delivery to WIPP since early 2014, that does not quite average out to two a week.
Still, it’s closer to two shipments per week than one-and-a-half shipments a week, which puts DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office and WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) about in sync with the shipping forecast they have delivered publicly since before the mine officially reopened.
Here’s DOE’s full shipment tally for April, plus the first confirmed delivery for this month. The department does not confirm deliveries and publish them online until two weeks after it inters the waste underground at WIPP.
|
Date Received |
Shipped From |
| 4/7/2017 |
Idaho National Laboratory |
| 4/13/2017 |
Idaho National Laboratory |
| 4/13/2017 |
Savannah River Site |
| 4/21/2017 |
Savannah River Site |
| 4/22/2017 |
Idaho National Laboratory |
| 4/28/2017 |
Waste Control Specialists |
| 5/1/2017 |
Idaho National Laboratory |
This puts DOE somewhat behind its target of sending 128 shipments to WIPP by Jan. 31, 2018. Hitting the goal will require the agency to average more than three shipments a week for the remainder of this year and the first month of the next.
The top DOE official at the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office, Todd Shrader, has been managing expectations about that figure for months now. At a WIPP town hall in March, Shrader answered his own rhetorical question “do I think it will be exactly 128 shipments?” with “nah.”
