The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has opened a training center in Carlsbad, N.M., to prepare staff for resumption of shipments of remote-handled waste at the underground disposal facility, the agency tweeted this week.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has not taken shipments of remote-handled (RH) transuranic waste using RH-72B casks since 2014, a DOE spokesperson said by email Tuesday.
WIPP has begun its evaluation of the RH-72B equipment and systems, which have been dormant for seven years, the DOE spokesperson said. Once the evaluations are completed a schedule will be developed to provide a timeframe for RH-72B waste receipt.
Currently the estimate is “a few years” before shipments in RH-72B casks resume, the spokesperson said.
According to the Monday tweet from WIPP’s official handle, the facility will train employees in acceptance testing and other issues surrounding this waste, which is more radioactive than the contact-handled waste that accounts for a far greater volume of the waste emplaced in the salt mine, according to DOE.
Of the 175,570 cubic meters of waste DOE may store at WIPP under the federal Land Withdrawal Act of 1992, the agency estimates that roughly 7,080 cubic meters — only 4% of the total — will be remote-handled transuranic waste.
Remote-handled waste has a surface radiation dose of 200 millirem or more while contact-handled transuranic waste has a dose of less than 200 millirem. Due to the higher radioactivity, remote-handled waste requires special handling and shielding to protect workers, DOE has said.
In December 2018, WIPP received a shipment of remote-handled waste from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, transported in a shielded container. The DOE has supported use of shielded containers for safeguarding certain lower-activity remote-handled waste and limiting the radioactivity risk, once inside the container, to something akin to contact-handled waste.
Since 2018, WIPP has received six shipments total of RH waste with four coming from Argonne and two from the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, according to DOE.
The performance work statement included in the request for proposals suggests more frequent RH shipments in the future. The documents says the WIPP operator will help transuranic generator sites prepare for any readiness review on moving the remote-handled waste.
The winning prime should restart canister processing capabilities to include unloading and transferring canisters, transporting to the underground and emplacing the more radioactive waste, according to the procurement document. The prime contractor is expected to operate and maintain equipment for disposing of RH and “develop and implement, as appropriate, newly designed methods for emplacement” of RH that might be safer, quicker or more cost-effective.
One of the priorities outlined in the White House’s $430-million budget request for WIPP is “increasing the number of regulatorily approved shielded container assemblies designs available for disposal of remote-handled transuranic waste.”
Separately, DOE said in a press release this week the total of all transuranic drums hauled to WIPP from the Idaho National Laboratory over time is approaching 2,200. Idaho is WIPP’s most prolific shipper to date and most of the waste from the national laboratory originated from the former Rocky Flats weapons plant in Colorado.
Under a 1995 settlement agreement between Idaho, DOE and the U.S. Navy more than 58,000 cubic meters of 65,000 cubic meters of Cold War legacy waste has been shipped to WIPP from Idaho, according to the release. WIPP is currently authorized to take six shipments of Idaho waste weekly through February 2022, DOE said in the release.
