The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had another busy month by post-2014 standards, receiving 48 shipments, with the vast majority coming from Idaho National Laboratory.
According to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)’s public website, the underground salt mine received 43 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste from the Idaho lab, two from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, one from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one each from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The 48 shipments during September more than triples the 15 shipments WIPP took in during September 2022. Likewise, the 375 recorded during the first nine months of the 2023 calendar year outdistanced the 174 shipments during the first three-quarters of 2022.
The uptick coincides in large part with WIPP’s opening of Panel 8 in October 2022. Unlike Panel 7, left contaminated by the 2014 underground radiation leak, Panel 8 does not require workers to don extra personal protective equipment.
Prior to the 2014 accident, 700 or more shipments annually were not unheard of, according to WIPP shipment data.
WIPP received 473 shipments during fiscal 2023, the best fiscal year since the facility resumed taking shipments in 2017 after being down for about three years following a February 2014 underground radiation leak.