WIPP Takes in 15 Shipments During November
The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 15 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during November.
There were five from the Idaho National Laboratory, six from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, three from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and one from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, according to the latest publicly-available information on the database for the site.
There have been 182 shipments of transuranic waste to the underground salt mine site during the first 11 months of 2020. That is significantly less than the 285 shipments recorded during the first 11 months of 2019.
The November 2020 shipment total of 15 is, however, higher than the November 2019 shipment total of 10, according to the database for the waste site.
Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have pointed to reduced operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with wintry weather during the first quarter along with a somewhat longer-than-usual maintenance outage as among the reasons for the decline this year.
