PHOENIX — As time goes by, the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico could increasingly dispose of transuranic material from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a top nuclear cleanup official said here Monday.
The Idaho National Laboratory is far and away the No. 1 shipper of defense-related transuranic waste to the underground salt mine near the city of Carlsbad. However, WIPP should receive all known legacy Idaho TRU no later than 2030, said Todd Shrader, principal deputy assistant secretary in the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
Less than 10% of the 65,000 cubic meters of TRU covered by a 1995 DOE settlement agreement with Idaho and the Navy, along some other legacy material, still must be shipped to WIPP. At that point, Environmental Management’s TRU disposal program would be mostly complete, except for the Hanford Site in Washington state, Shrader said.
“The mission becomes ever more dominated by NNSA” from that point on, Shrader said during a panel discussion at the Waste Management Symposia
The National Nuclear Security Administration expects to generate more transuranic waste in coming years as it ramps up production of plutonium pits for nuclear warheads, along with other activities such as plutonium downblending. As plutonium manufacturing increases so will the amount of TRU waste generated, the Los Alamos National Laboratory said last April when the NNSA reopened an indoor TRU loading facility.
Shrader, who until last year managed the Energy Department office that oversees WIPP, made the comments in reply to an inquiry from panel moderator Marty Schneider, senior vice president for business development at Longenecker & Associates. Schneider asked Shrader if there is increasing NNSA interest in keeping the transuranic waste disposal site open. Shrader said yes. Current DOE projections indicate WIPP will operate through 2050.
Environmental Management officials at WIPP already have a close working relationship with the NNSA, Shrader said.
