The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 39 shipments of transuranic waste during July and is on pace for its biggest year since an accidental underground radiation release in 2014, according to a Department of Energy website.
Along with 31 shipments from Idaho National Laboratory, there were five from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, two from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and one from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
This July tally is roughly on par with July 2022, when the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) took in 37 shipments. For the first seven months of 2023, the underground salt mine has received 269 shipments, roughly doubling the 134 during the same period a year ago.
With two months left in fiscal 2023, WIPP has handled 367 shipments since Oct. 1, 2022. That’s up from 195 during the first 10 months of fiscal 2022.
The figures suggest a big jump in shipments handled since work crews started emplacing waste in Panel 8 in November 2022, and moved out of Panel 7.
Panel 7 was contaminated by the February 2014 radiation leak from an improperly-remediate drum from Los Alamos so underground crews there were forced to wear extra personal protective garb, DOE has said.
Since reopening in 2017, WIPP’s largest volume was 311 during the 2018 calendar year, according to WIPP’s public website.
By contrast in 2013, the last full year before the accident damaged the underground and the ventilation system, WIPP received 724 shipments.
In June, the manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office said the new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, designed to triple WIPP’s underground airflow to roughly 540,000 cubic feet per minute, could start operating in 2024. That’s a year or two sooner than estimates provided earlier this year.
DOE and prime Salado Isolation Mining Contractors call the new ventilation system key to returning WIPP to about 700 shipments per year.
