The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received 16 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during November, according to DOE.
There were 14 shipments recorded on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) public website as of Tuesday Dec. 13. The website runs about two weeks behind active shipments and a site spokesperson said two more shipments arrived Nov. 30 to bring the monthly total to 16.
This is below the November 2021 tally of 27 shipments received at the underground salt mine. Shipments to WIPP, however, are still exceeding the 2021 pace when 193 reached the site over the first 11 months of the year; it’s 219 during the same period in 2022.
Altogether there were eight shipments last month from Idaho National Laboratory, seven from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
A Bechtel National affiliate, Tularosa Basin Range Services doing business as Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, is taking over as the new WIPP prime from Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership in a transition that should be complete around Feb. 9.
Since an underground radiation leak in February 2014 that closed the facility for about three years, WIPP has only exceeded 300 annual shipments once. But DOE is hoping to return WIPP to pre-accident levels of around 700 yearly shipments. The optimism is linked to the recent startup of the new Panel 8, which because it lacks contamination from the accident does not require so much personal protective gear for workers. A new underground ventilation system that should be online around 2025 should also up throughput.
