The Department of Energy could start a federal readiness assessment this month at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facilities in California that prepare transuranic waste for shipment to the agency’s underground disposal site in New Mexico, according to a government safety board.
On May 31, 2022, the lab began the contractor readiness assessment for restarting operations of the Centralized Waste Processing Line within Building 332, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff report dated June 3.
The federal assessment is tentatively scheduled for mid-to-late July, a Livermore spokesperson said Thursday via email.
The DOE envisions the next Livermore shipments being sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in September or October, a spokesperson said by email Thursday morning.
The next shipments will be for inventory reduction of certified waste, the WIPP spokesperson said. Limited shipments from Livermore could occur annually, or as needed to reduce inventory.
The line was designed to process transuranic (TRU) waste from other areas in Building 332 to meet the acceptance criteria for DOE’s WIPP near Carlsbad, N.M. The Centralized Waste Processing Line’s glove box was installed in 2015.
In September 2020, workers at Lawrence Livermore loaded the first shipment of TRU waste to WIPP in over a decade. Livermore sent a couple more shipments to the WIPP underground salt mine in October 2021, according to the DOE’s public website for the disposal facility.
The most recent shipments were designed to help Livermore open up on-site storage space, where the waste had been held, according to DOE. Livermore generates TRU waste from its national defense research.
Livermore has so far sent a total of 38 shipments of TRU waste to WIPP, according to a WIPP summary.
