The Department of Energy is prioritizing returning the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to full-scale emplacement of defense transuranic waste, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Tuesday.
Completing a new underground ventilation system and taking advantage of a new accounting method for recording the volume of waste deposited in the salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., are key, Perry said during House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee hearing on DOE’s fiscal 2020 budget plan.
The first move should prevent WIPP from prematurely hitting its transuranic waste limits, supporters say, while the second should enable simultaneous salt mining and underground emplacement. Current waste emplacement rates are less than half of what was being done prior to a 2014 underground radiation release.
Advocacy groups in the state have filed a legal challenge to a revised state WIPP waste permit, approved in December by the New Mexico Environment Department. The change specified that under the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act waste volume no longer needs to be recorded by the outermost container.
In other words, a 5-gallon container of waste inside a larger 55-gallon drum no longer is counted as 55 gallons, Perry told the committee. While there is some “pushback” to the change, the energy secretary said the agency would try to address stakeholder concerns.
The WIPP prime contractor and DOE in November issued a $135 million subcontract to build a new ventilation system at the underground disposal facility to increase underground airflow to about 540,000 cubic feet per minute, about triple the current airflow rate.
Perry expects construction will take 12 to 18 months, although the DOE budget justification released this week indicates actual operation of the new system is not scheduled until November 2022.
Finally, Perry noted that WIPP will receive transuranic waste resulting from “dilute and dispose” downblending of surplus weapon-usable plutonium at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
