PHOENIX, Ariz. — During 2017, its first year of operation following a nearly three-year shutdown, the Energy Department Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico resumed disposing of transuranic waste, tightened its vetting of incoming shipments, and resumed salt mining, officials said this week.
The nation’s only underground repository for TRU waste, which is overseen by DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, was the focus of much attention during the annual Waste Management Symposia here.
While WIPP won’t recapture production levels recorded prior to a February 2014 radiological accident until a new permanent ventilation system is operational in 2021, progress is being made, DOE and contractor officials said during several presentations at the conference. That prior level was about 17 shipments per week.
“The team is feeling like we are operating in the new normal,” said Bruce Covert, president and project manager for WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership. This new normal includes a daily schedule of one shift of salt mining followed by work shift of waste emplacement.
WIPP reopened for waste emplacement in January 2017 and began receiving shipments from other DOE sites in April of that year. The facility received 133 shipments from DOE generator sites in 2017, which exceeded its own internal target.
WIPP as of Monday had received 53 shipments of TRU waste in 2018, said Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader. The site is currently averaging about seven shipments per week, he added.
Looking ahead, Shrader said during the panel the site plans to receive 300 shipments during the 12 months between February 2018 and January 2019. As was the case in 2017, the Idaho National Laboratory is expected to be the largest single shipper with 150 during the current 12-month period, Shrader said.
Since WIPP began taking shipments from other facilities, the pace of operations has been slow for various reasons – primarily reduced levels of ventilation following the 2014 accident and the protective gear workers must wear in Panel 7 due to its proximity to the accident site, Shrader said.
Following the accident, WIPP reduced ventilation from 450,000 cubic feet per minute to 60,000 cubic feet per minute to reduce the chance of spreading contamination. Supplemental ventilation improvements have improved the level to 150,000 CFM. The new permanent ventilation system should raise that to 540,000 CFM.
J.R. Stroble, who heads DOE’s TRU Sites and Transportation Division, said WIPP is also “taking a look at how waste is packaged upstream.” This is in order to ensure problematic drums of waste are not sent into the underground, Stroble said. The container that burst open and released radiation in 2014 originated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico.
Underground salt mining resumed in January in order to start developing waste storage Panel 8 over the next couple years. So far about 3,600 tons of salt have been extracted in limited mining.
