Managers at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., plan more training to help ensure no mislabeled or improperly packaged shipments reach the underground disposal site for defense transuranic waste.
Some training is being developed and could be rolled out in the near future to minimize the chance of any shipments ending up at WIPP without passing muster with its waste acceptance criteria, Kirk Lachman, acting manager for DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said Thursday. He did not provide details, but seemed to suggest the training could cover WIPP and its waste generator sites.
At the conclusion of the quarterly WIPP Town Hall forum, Lachman said the Carlsbad Field Office plans to sweat the details when it comes to complying with a DOE-wide assessment of procedures for packaging and shipping radioactive waste.
The review, to be conducted by DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, was directed in a July 9 memo from Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette. The assessment was ordered after it was learned mislabeled waste was sent to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) for six years.
Nine shipments with a total of 32 containers were sent to the NNSS from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., between 2013 and 2018, the Energy Department acknowledged recently.
The review is “looking at all waste shipments and waste certification activities,” including transuranic waste, Lachman said. “We are getting our transuranic waste from the Oak Ridge cleanup side,” which is a different group of employees than those dealing with LLW at Y-12, he added.
The acting Carlsbad manager said salt mining and other work would continue at WIPP “if we have a halt in waste shipments” to the underground site as a result of the safety review. The waste shipments to Nevada have been suspended while DOE investigates.
Overall, Lachman expects the assessment will have minimal impact on WIPP, as many certified shipments are already on their way to the disposal site.
