The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is dealing with a software error that forced some transuranic waste to be sent back to the Idaho National Laboratory in late May because of duplicate shipment data.
Generation of duplicate package numbers “was an extremely rare occurrence that will be addressed by an improvement in our waste tracking software,” a DOE spokesperson at the Carlsbad Field Office that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) said in a Wednesday email.
In the interim, WIPP’s prime contractor National Waste Partnership implemented additional checks that screen data for duplicate package numbers in pending shipments, the DOE spokesperson said.
Nuclear Waste Partnership notified the Carlsbad Field Office about the shipments with the duplicate numbers on May 27, while the waste was still on its way to WIPP from Idaho, according to a July 2 staff report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
One of the shipments was allowed to continue on its way to WIPP after managers at Carlsbad and Idaho concluded the data for one of the shipments was correct. The other shipment was sent back to Idaho, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the same Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report said while WIPP staff members continue to telework, the onsite presence at the transuranic waste disposal site is gradually increasing.
As of Monday, approximately 58% of the prime contractor’s personnel had returned to regular shifts at the WIPP site, the DOE spokesperson said by email.
