Energy Department Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Tuesday it could take an additional year to get New Mexico approval to change the way the volume of transuranic waste is counted for underground disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The New Mexico Environment Department said June 1 it plans a more extensive Class 3 review of the site permit modification sought by DOE, rather than treating it as a Class 2 modification.
The next step is for NMED to send DOE a technical incompleteness determination. The Energy Department and WIPP management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership would then respond to this document, and the state would issue a draft permit. The draft permit would entail a minimum 45-day comment period. There could eventually be an administrative hearing and a report by a state public hearings officer.
Not counting the empty space between drums inside a waste container, as DOE prefers, would mathematically reduce the amount of waste now stored at WIPP by about 30 percent, Shrader said.
Shrader gave this update to a meeting of a National Academies panel studying whether WIPP is a viable disposal option for downblended plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The panel is evaluating WIPP following the Energy Department’s announced cancellation of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), which is being built at Savannah River to convert 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. The so-called dilute-and-dispose option would send the processed material eventually to WIPP in TRU waste form.
The volume calibration won’t change the fact WIPP needs to develop more storage panels, beyond the currently approved 10, within a few years to avoid a disruption in waste shipments from other DOE sites, Shrader said.
