The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 26 shipments of transuranic waste during June, according to its public website.
Eight were received from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee but the rest traveled from the Idaho National Laboratory.
During the first half of 2021 the underground disposal site had at deadline received 96 shipments, a slight increase from the first six months of 2020 when there were only 86 shipments during the early months of staffing restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
By contrast two years ago WIPP took in 163 shipments from generator sites. Transuranic waste includes contaminated debris from old equipment, rags, soil and clothing used during defense-related work around the weapons complex. Going back to the first half of 2013, WIPP received and emplaced 324 shipments over six months – which is close to the facility’s best annual total between 2017 and the present.
So far this month, there have been six additional shipments logged, four from Idaho and two from Oak Ridge, as of July 7, according to the most recent data on the website as of Thursday afternoon..
In February 2014 an underground radiation leak forced the facility out of service for about three years.
The WIPP total for all of 2018 was 311. The DOE hopes to see shipments resume the pre-accident pace in 2025 after startup of the new Safety Significant Confined Ventilation System.
The disposal site is operated by Nuclear Waste Partnership, a joint venture of Amentum and BWX Technologies with Orano as a key subcontractor. Last month DOE released a final request for proposals for a new management contract potentially worth $3 billion over 10 years. Bids are due Aug. 3.
Idaho Shipments to WIPP Held Up Due to Duplicate Data
The agency and WIPP are dealing with a software error that forced some transuranic waste to be sent back to the Idaho National Laboratory in late May because of duplicate shipment data.
Generation of duplicate package numbers “was an extremely rare occurrence that will be addressed by an improvement in our waste tracking software,” a DOE spokesperson at the Carlsbad Field Office that oversees WIPP said in a Wednesday email.
In the interim, National Waste Partnership implemented additional checks that screen data for duplicate package numbers in pending shipments, the DOE spokesperson said.
Nuclear Waste Partnership notified the Carlsbad Field Office about the shipments with the duplicate numbers on May 27, while the waste was still on its way to WIPP from Idaho, according to a July 2 staff report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
One of the shipments was allowed to continue on its way to WIPP after managers at Carlsbad and Idaho concluded the data for one of the shipments was correct. The other shipment was to be sent back to Idaho for the necessary verification, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the same Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report said while WIPP staff members continue to telework, the onsite presence at the transuranic waste disposal site is gradually increasing.
As of Monday, approximately 58% of the prime contractor’s personnel had returned to regular shifts at the WIPP site, the DOE spokesperson said by email.
