It could be three to four years before the Department of Energy resumes taking regular shipments of highly radioactive, remote-handled transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., the top local federal manager said recently.
During a virtual town hall-style meeting earlier this month for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), Reinhard Knerr, manager of Carlsbad Field Office, took several questions about the planned resumption of shipments of remote-handled (RH) waste. A recording of the meeting was posted online.
A startup evaluation of the traditional borehole emplacement method for remote-handled waste is underway, Knerr said in the Nov. 18 presentation.
This evaluation will include training and testing of staff who will be involved in the disposal of the remote-handled waste, which is more radioactive than the contact-handled waste, which accounts for well over 90% of the 13,000 shipments that WIPP has received since its opening in 1999, Knerr said. All but 775 of WIPP’s first 13,000 shipments have been the less radioactive contact-handled transuranic waste, according to DOE.
There must also be system equipment repairs, refurbishments, replacements and procedure updates, Knerr added.
The DOE prime contractor for WIPP, Nuclear Waste Partnership, will “build mock-ups for training purposes,” Knerr said.
Since 2018, WIPP has received “small quantities” of remote-handled waste moved in shielded containers to protect workers. This has enabled the remote-handled waste to be treated much like contact-handled waste, Knerr said. The small amounts of remote-handled waste during that period came from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, according to DOE.
The DOE underground disposal site has not received remote-handled waste using RH-72B casks since 2014, according to the agency.
Remote-handled transuranic waste contains more than 100 nanocuries of alpha emitting transuranic isotopes per gram with half- lives greater than 20 years and a payload surface dose rate of 200 millirem per hour or greater. By contrast, contact-handled waste has a surface dose rate of less than 200 millirem, according to DOE.
Overall, WIPP received 199 shipments of transuranic waste during fiscal 2021, which ended Sept. 30. In part because of COVID-19, that was below the DOE target of 259 shipments for the period, Knerr said during the presentation.
The DOE presentation suggests WIPP should hit 400 shipments during fiscal 2022, which started Oct. 1, and could hit 600 shipments in fiscal 2023.
