A New Mexico citizens group that is a frequent critic of the Department of Energy wants a firm end date for closure of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., and greater transparency surrounding the federal transuranic waste program.
In addition, Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director at Southwest Research and Information Center, told the New Mexico Legislature Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee in Friday Aug. 5 testimony it is past time for DOE to start seeking a successor site to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
WIPP received its first shipment of transuranic (TRU) in 1999 but the facility is a pilot project no longer, Hancock complained, because DOE plans to keep using the site decades into the future.
In a regulatory filing with the New Mexico Environment Department in late June, DOE and its prime contractor said WIPP closure is not likely before 2083, Hancock said. The DOE was responding to a Technical Incompleteness Determination from the state in May for a 10-year permit renewal.
DOE will be generating WIPP-bound waste streams through 2070, and “facility closure could begin no earlier than [calendar year] 2083,” DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office manager Reinhard Knerr and Nuclear Waste Partnership project manager Sean Dunagan wrote in a June 27 letter to the New Mexico Environment Department.
DOE and the contractor said in the letter closure will likely not occur until the WIPP facility achieves its capacity of 6.2 million cubic feet (175,564 cubic meters) of transuranic waste volume as calculated under the Land Withdrawal Act. A New Mexico court upheld DOE’s revised method of calculating that volume in November 2021.
Hancock also called it past time for DOE to seek a new TRU waste repository. DOE has issued no public plans for other TRU waste repositories, “nor has it taken any action to even start such a siting process, including identifying the standards that it would use for such a site,” Hancock said.
Also addressing the state legislature on Friday was Knerr, the Carlsbad manager. In his written testimony, Knerr said WIPP has received 190 shipments of TRU waste so far this fiscal year. By comparison, the facility received 199 shipments during fiscal 2021, which ended Sept. 30, 2021.
DOE senior adviser for environmental manager William (Ike) White in a May 17 online meeting with Alliance for Nuclear Accountability verified there are no active plans for a second TRU disposal site, Hancock said.
