The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received its first shipment of defense transuranic waste 20 years ago this week.
The Energy Department, WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and officials in southeastern New Mexico are holding various activities in March and April to mark the 20th anniversary of the inaugural shipment, which arrived March 26, 1999, from the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory further north in New Mexico.
The underground salt mine has to date received about 12,390 shipments of TRU waste, generally radioactively contaminated rags, soils, equipment, and sludge, from Cold War and Manhattan Project sites since opening.
There was no 15th anniversary celebration for WIPP due to a February 2014 underground radiation release that forced the facility out of operation for about three years. It resumed taking shipments from DOE sites in April 2017 and received 133 by the end of the year.
In 2018, WIPP received 311 shipments, with 243 coming from the Idaho National Laboratory. This year, WIPP had received 43 shipments as of March 8, the latest date for which data is publicly available.
By comparison, in 2013, its last full year or operation prior to the accident, WIPP took in 724 shipments. Energy Department Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader does not expect anything close to those numbers before a new underground ventilation system goes into operation, which DOE’s budget anticipates by November 2022.
