Shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico from Idaho National Laboratory could decline in 2024, according to a recent federal safety board update.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad receives waste drums from the Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), as noted in a staff report posted online during the past week by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The lab “will now send WIPP seven shipments per week versus the previously scheduled 12 shipments per week due to 2024 budget changes affecting overtime pay and work schedules at the AMWTP,” according to the board memo dated Oct. 6.
A DOE spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DOE still aspires to hit 12 shipments per week of operation in 2024, but temporarily keeping the level at seven prevents Idaho-based waste crews from working seven days per week and receiving overtime while DOE is under a continuing budget resolution, an agency source told Exchange Monitor Thursday. The agency does not yet want to commit to the higher shipping level and then experience a “lapse” in funding, the source said.
Under the current stopgap funding plan worked out in late September, DOE and other federal agencies are operating at fiscal 2023 levels until Nov. 17. The federal government could then shut down absent another continuing resolution.
The Idaho lab is by far the largest shipper to the underground disposal site, according to WIPP’s public website. During the first nine months of calendar year 2023 there have been 375 shipments sent to WIPP and nearly 300 (298) came from Idaho National Laboratory.
During the recently-completed fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30, WIPP received 473 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste and 348 came from Idaho National Laboratory.
Under a settlement agreement between Idaho and the federal government, Idaho is currently supposed to account for at least 55% of the shipments arriving at WIPP based upon a three-year rolling average, Mark Brown, a DOE manager based in Idaho, told the Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board Wednesday. “Right now we are at 66%,” Brown said.
“Some of our waste has been packaged in drums for over five years,” Brown said. “Some of that sludge in those containers is degrading the drum itself” and must be “overpacked” in a larger container before being shipped to WIPP, Brown said.
In the fall of 2019, DOE started to wind down operation of the AMWTP, which compacted the size of transuranic waste prior to shipment to WIPP. But there are still several years’ worth of treated transuranic waste still awaiting shipment to WIPP. Decontamination and decommissioning of the AMWTP facility is underway, according to the Biden Administration’s fiscal 2024 budget request.
