The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., had through Oct. 3 received 254 shipments of defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in 2018.
At least one more has come in since then — a shipment from Area G of DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico.
The Energy Department and its LANL legacy cleanup contractor, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), said the Area G shipment left Los Alamos on Oct. 4 and reached WIPP that evening. However, the shipment has yet to show up in WIPP’s public waste database, which has a lag time of about two weeks.
“This is the first of what will be regular shipments of waste from Area G, a LANL waste management area, in more than four years,” Danny Nichols, N3B manager for contact-handled TRU waste, said in a press release.
The Oct. 4 shipment did not include the 60 remediated nitrate salt drums that outgoing LANL management contractor Los Alamos National Security finished processing in late 2017, the spokesperson said. Those drums are part of the so-called general population of TRU waste containers at Area G, and will eventually be sent to WIPP as the shipment schedule permits, the spokesperson said.
Of the waste shipments received by the end of September at WIPP, 196 came from the Idaho National Laboratory, 44 from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, 13 from Waste Control Specialists in Texas, and 1 from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Based on 254 shipments in roughly 39 weeks, WIPP has averaged 6.5 shipments per week this calendar year. The facility averaged 3.5 shipments weekly in 2017, taking in 133 in a little over 38 weeks. WIPP resumed taking shipments from DOE generator sites in April 2017. It had been offline for about three years following a February 2014 underground radiation release linked to problem drums from Los Alamos.
In 2013, the last full year of operation prior to the accident, WIPP took in 724 shipments for an average of almost 14 per week over the 52-week period.
WIPP Bypass Road Gets DOE’s Environmental OK
Meanwhile, the Energy Department has found construction of a bypass road in Eddy County, N.M., around the WIPP facility, presents no significant environmental problems.
The finding of no significant impact for the 3-mile North Access Bypass Road was issued Oct. 3 in a document signed by DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader.
With construction of a new permanent ventilation system for the underground disposal facility expected to start by the end of the year, and other infrastructure projects in the pipeline, the bypass is designed to connect a northern and southern access road and divert non-WIPP traffic more than a mile away from the current intersection. The new construction projects should increase truck traffic around WIPP roads, already seeing an uptick in non-DOE traffic.
The project should “reduce traffic congestion in the area that has increased principally because of the increase in oil and gas industry vehicles and semi-trailer size trucks,” DOE said in the document.
Following an environmental assessment, the department determined the project would have negligible impact on soil, air quality, grazing range land, and cultural resources.
Nuclear Waste Partnership, DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP, has said the subcontract for the North Access Bypass Road should be awarded in early 2019, with construction completed by 2020.
