The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina earlier this month sent its first shipment of transuranic (TRU) waste for 2018 to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, ending a yearlong layoff in waste exports.
The DOE facility said in a press release it shipped “five standard waste boxes” to the disposal site near Carlsbad. It is unclear exactly how much waste that amounts to, but an average shipment in the past has been anywhere from 6 to 8 cubic meters of material.
Savannah River has now sent 10 shipments to WIPP since the disposal site in April 2017 reopened to waste from across the DOE complex. That includes nine shipments sent last year, before the Energy Department started prioritizing shipments from its other properties. The 10 shipments include 86 cubic meters of material.
“We are pleased to be making more shipments to WIPP,” Mike Budney, DOE-Savannah River manager, said in a press release on Thursday. “This has been an important mission for SRS and our employees are committed to ensuring safe, secure and efficient removal of transuranic waste from the state.”
The Energy Department did not respond Monday to a question on when the next shipments might be scheduled. But Jim Folk, the assistant manager for waste disposition at SRS, said last month that a second shipment was expected soon after the first.
TRU waste is defined as any material contaminated with radioactive elements during activities such as processing of spent reactor fuel or nuclear weapons production. It typically includes protective clothing, tools, rags, equipment, and miscellaneous items contaminated with small amounts of plutonium. Under federal law, WIPP is the sole disposal facility for waste of this type from DOE operations.
Shipments from Savannah River were routine before WIPP closed for nearly three years due to two incidents in February 2014: a vehicle fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release in the underground disposal space.
Prior to those incidents, SRS had sent 1,650 shipments totaling more than 10,600 cubic meters of transuranic waste since 1999, when WIPP first opened. It now stores roughly 500 cubic meters of the material and has about 110 shipments left on site.
Before the WIPP shutdown, Savannah River was expected to ship all of its TRU waste to the facility by 2016. The site is still expected to finish well ahead of the 2035 baseline projection.
