The Department of Energy should take a number of steps to ensure it comprehensively understands its transuranic waste disposal needs as it looks to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday.
WIPP is the nation’s sole permanent disposal site for waste contaminated by nuclear elements heavier than uranium from across the DOE complex. It reopened in December following a nearly three-year shutdown following an underground fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release.
The Energy Department anticipates filling WIPP to its current capacity by 2026, requiring further excavation in the underground mine, which currently lacks the room for disposal of all defense transuranic waste, the GAO said in a report.
“While DOE officials recognize that expansion of WIPP’s disposal space may be necessary in the future, they have not analyzed or planned for the facility’s expansion because their focus has been on resuming operations at WIPP,” congressional auditors said. The report notes that DOE’s existing five-year transuranic waste management plan does not address WIPP expansion; the agency is also not expected until 2024 to complete modeling that would be needed for what is likely to be a years-long regulatory review of expanding the facility.
The challenges facing WIPP are emphasized by the Energy Department’s plan to scrap the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina in favor of a “dilute and dispose” method in which processed plutonium would be sent to WIPP rather than converted into nuclear reactor fuel, GAO said. The department’s 2016 transuranic waste inventory encompasses 68,350 cubic meters of contact-handled waste and 3,160 cubic meters of remote-handled waste to be buried at WIPP – which does not cover any part of the 34 metric tons of plutonium that would otherwise be treated at the MOX plant.
To address these issues, GAO said, the Energy Department should develop a long-term plan for disposal of transuranic waste and a schedule for determining whether “potential” transuranic waste can be shipped to WIPP, among other measures.
The Energy Department concurred with the recommendations.
