The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico received 23 shipments of transuranic waste in July, bringing the total to 109 for the first seven months of 2020.
That is down significantly from 194 recorded during the first seven months of 2019.
Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-led prime contractor for the underground waste disposal site, has attributed the drop-off to three circumstances: rough winter weather that slowed delivery of waste shipments; a prolonged maintenance outage during the first quarter of 2020; and dramatically scaled-back operations from late March to late May due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The July shipments encompassed 13 from the Idaho National Laboratory, eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and two from the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. The two transuranic waste shipments on July 24 were the first to make the 275-mile trip from Sandia since 2012, WIPP management said in a July 30 press release.
The two shipments from Sandia involved remote-handled waste, which has a higher radioactivity level than the contact-handled material that accounts for the vast majority of TRU waste that goes into the WIPP underground.
The Energy Department hopes to receive 400 shipments at WIPP during fiscal 2020, which started Oct. 1, 2019. The mine had received 147 as of July 31.
