The extended closure of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico threatens the Energy’s Department legal obligation to remove all transuranic waste from Idaho by the end of 2018, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in a report released Friday.
Department officials have acknowledged the possible risk cited in the IG’s audit of interim storage of transuranic waste in the wake of the February 2014 vehicle fire and underground radiation release that shuttered WIPP for nearly three years.
Generally, DOE facilities that hold significant amounts of transuranic waste “were able to meet their individual interim TRU waste storage needs” while they waited for WIPP to reopen to waste shipments last April, the IG’s Office said.
“Also, although the Department did not satisfy all of its regulatory commitments related to TRU waste stored at large quantity sites, nothing came to our attention that would indicate that regulatory commitments impacted large quantity sites’ plans to store TRU waste on-site until WIPP resumed operations,” the report says.
Under a 1995 settlement agreement with Idaho, DOE committed to taking all of its transuranic waste out of the state by Dec. 31, 2018. It had shipped about 55,000 of the 65,000 cubic meters of material on-site by early 2014.
The Idaho-DOE agreement also mandates that a “running average” of at least 2,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste be removed from the state each year from 2014 to 2016.
“While these commitments were not met to date, there was not a defined impact to the Department,” according to the report.
Idaho has been by far the top waste shipper to the reopened WIPP. Among 53 shipments received through early September, 33 came from the Idaho National Lab.
