The Department of Energy’s inventory of legacy transuranic waste at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has been winnowed to the point where the last such shipment to the underground disposal site in New Mexico could be only five years away, a federal advisory committee heard last week.
Most of Savannah River’s defense-related legacy transuranic waste has been hauled to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) over the years, Kerri Crawford, a solid waste manager for Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, told the Savannah River Citizens Advisory Board on Nov. 7. Ideally, the last such shipment from the site would occur in the 2027-to-2028 time period, she added.
When WIPP opened in 1999, there were more than 30,000 containers of transuranic waste being stored at the Savannah River Site, Crawford said. There were also over 9,000 drums buried at the site near Aiken, S.C. She added that more than 1,700 shipments, or roughly 35,000 legacy containers, have been sent to WIPP from Savannah River as of the end of September.
During fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30, there were 26 shipments sent to WIPP — 13 legacy and 13 containers of newly-generated transuranic waste from Savannah River.
The remaining transuranic legacy waste at Savannah River is made up of 443 contact-handled drums and 151 drums of the more-radioactive remote-handled transuranic waste, Crawford said in her slide presentation. There are probably a total of 64 shipments left of legacy transuranic waste.
Crawford also said DOE and the contractor are continuing their investigation into a transuranic waste container that was returned to the Savannah River Site from WIPP due to radioactive contamination. She declined to give a timetable for when that work will be complete.
