The Energy Department and a contractor are gearing up to seek renewal of their 10-year state hazardous waste facility permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The current state permit was issued to DOE and WIPP management contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership on Nov. 30, 2010, becoming effective one month later, according to a Jan. 30 presentation on the draft renewal application at Carlsbad, N.M.
The permit application will be submitted to the New Mexico Environment Department, which would presumably rule on the new application before the old permit expires. The WIPP presentation did not list a timeline for potential state action.
One of the major changes envisioned through this renewal is keeping the underground defense transuranic waste disposal facility open through 2050, rather than the current official closing date of 2030, Carlsbad City Council member J.J. Chavez told an Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) meeting on Jan. 31 in Washington, D.C.
The January presentation on the draft application says the disposal phase and closure date will be extended until 2052.
A copy of the draft renewal application submitted to the New Mexico Environment Department was posted on the WIPP website on Dec. 20. The Energy Department and NWP used the draft document to solicit public feedback on the early draft.
The DOE held two pre-application public meetings last month, one in Carlsbad and another Jan. 23 in Santa Fe. Nuclear Waste Partnership accepted public questions on the draft renewal application through Monday.
The renewal application for WIPP’s next decade of operation should be filed by March 31.
The Energy Department said this week that progress continues on development of Panel 8 of the disposal facility. Once Panel 7 is full, waste emplacement is expected to begin in Panel 8 in late 2021. Each of the underground panels is about the length of three football fields, and also 33 feet wide, 13 feet tall. For context, WIPP has now received more than 12,600 shipments since it opened in 1999 and has yet to completely fill seven panels.
The Energy Department also said recently that its annual maintenance outage for the facility, which includes work that would otherwise disrupt WIPP operations, will start Feb. 17 rather than January as it has in recent years. These maintenance outages typically last for a couple of weeks.
Waste shipments to WIPP were suspended in early December due to problems with a waste hoist used to lower material into the underground. But waste disposal did resume during January with 11 shipments arriving as of Jan. 22, the latest date for which information was publicly available on WIPP’s website.
