WIPP Gets Needed EPA Recertification

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico remains compliant with U.S. environmental law essential to the transuranic waste facility’s ongoing operations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.

Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that the Department of Energy is complying with the regulations governing disposal of transuranic waste at the deep-underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M.

News of the the latest all-clear arrived Thursday, when the EPA released a pre-publication copy of its decision in the Federal Register.

DOE filed its latest application for recertification in March 2014, a month after the underground accidents that closed the mine for nearly three years. The agency must file for recertification again in March 2019. The review just completed covered changes at WIPP from March 2009 through March 2014.

Federal law empowers the EPA to revoke WIPP’s certification and, if necessary, force DOE to retrieve waste from the mine.

“This decision reconfirms WIPP’s long-term ability to safely isolate transuranic waste from the environment,” Todd Shrader, manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a statement emailed to the press Thursday. “I want to thank everyone who worked on the EPA Compliance Recertification Application. The recertification is highly important to the continued operation of WIPP and represents a lot of work by our federal and contractor staff and the EPA.”

WIPP reopened in late December after a pair of underground accidents in 2014, including a radiation release, closed the deep-underground transuranic waste disposal facility for almost three years. The mine began receiving waste shipments from across the DOE nuclear complex in April and has since accepted an average of about 2.5 shipments a week.

In total, the site has received more than 11,000 shipments of waste from other facilities in the DOE complex since opening in 1999.