Kenneth Fletcher and Jeremy L. Dillon
WC Monitor
11/21/2014
In order to meet a commitment to the state of Idaho, the Department of Energy this week sent 35 transuranic waste containers from the Department’s Idaho site to the Waste Control Specialists facility in Texas for interim storage. The waste was sent last November from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Idaho Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project for treatment, but was required to leave the state within one year. However, that removal of the waste was put on hold after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, used for the final disposal of transuranic waste, was shut down after a pair of incidents in February. “We needed to work very hard to provide a receiver site for that and there were 35 containers of waste removed from Idaho on Monday that safely arrived at Waste Control Specialists for temporary staging pending the opening of WIPP,” DOE Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Waste Management Christine Gelles said this week at the ETEBA Business Opportunities Conference in Knoxville, Tenn. “That was only possible through the very strong collaboration between us and the state of Texas and the regulator there and WCS to be able to meet that Idaho commitment.”
The waste sent this week meets both the WIPP and WCS acceptance criteria and does not contain the nitrate salts linked to the radiological release at WIPP, DOE said in a release. The 35 containers join the already-stored containers from LANL that WCS is currently storing in its federal facility. Those containers include the last portion of 3,706 cubic meters of transuranic waste that was stored aboveground at LANL and was targeted in a framework agreement with New Mexico for removal by June—a deal brokered after a wildfire in 2011 threatened the material. The campaign had been in its final stages when WIPP shut down indefinitely earlier this year due to two incidents: a salt truck fire and a radiation release.
According to DOE-Idaho spokeswoman Danielle Miller, AMWTP does not have any more LANL waste for removal. “The 35 containers were all of it. We do not have any additional off site waste in Idaho that needs to be moved,” Miller said. WCS declined to comment on the shipments.
