The Environmental Protection Agency could clear the Energy Department to keep disposing of transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant by mid-July, according to a recent regulatory filing.
Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that DOE is complying with the environmental laws governing waste disposal at the deep-underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M.
EPA declared DOE’s latest WIPP recertification application complete Jan. 13 and invited the public to comment on the application in a March 10 filing in the Federal Register. The Department of Energy filed that application in March 2014, a month after an accidental underground radiation release and unrelated underground fire closed the mine for almost three years.
The determination that the DOE application is complete does not mean the application is approved. Rather, the finding starts the clock on a six-month EPA technical review “that will determine if the WIPP remains in compliance with the disposal regulations,” EPA wrote in last week’s regulatory filing.
Federal law empowers EPA to revoke WIPP’s certification and, if necessary, force DOE to retrieve waste from the mine.
The EPA review now pending “includes a review of all changes since 2009,” at WIPP, according to EPA’s March 10 filing. The last five-year review covered disposal operations from 2004 to 2009. The public may comment on DOE’s application for recertification through April 10, EPA said in its regulatory filing last week.
WIPP reopened in December and since January has buried about 5 cubic meters of packaged transuranic waste a week.
