The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is expected to make four more shipments of transuranic waste to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the near term, after having just revived shipments from LANL’s Area G.
A weekly report dated Sept. 28 from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) indicated that LANL’s environmental management contractor, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), hopes to move a total of five shipments from by the end of November.
The board noted that DNFSB staff had finished a contractor readiness assessment of loading work at Area G, which subsequently sent a shipment to WIPP on Oct. 4. Area G is where the lab placed its transuranic (TRU) waste prior to WIPP’s opening in 1999.
A TRU waste shipment from LANL to WIPP was expected to take place last week but was delayed due to weather, said a DOE representative, who believes the second Los Alamos shipment was also coming out of Area G.
The Oct. 4 shipment involved legacy waste from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Off-Site Source Recovery Program, which gathers orphaned radioactive material from across the United States and international sites that might pose national security risks.
After being offline for about three years following a February 2014 radiation release underground linked to improperly prepared drums from Los Alamos, WIPP resumed taking shipments from DOE generator sites in April 2017.
Los Alamos had since then made one other waste shipment to WIPP in November 2017, of material from Area 55. Area 55 is at the center of the LANL property and is the location of the Plutonium Facility Complex.
