The Department of Energy received 10 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico during February.
A March 14 search of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) public website showed 10 shipments for the month taking place between Feb. 7 and Feb. 24.
Five were received from the Idaho National Laboratory and five from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. As of Monday, WIPP had reported a total of 18 shipments emplaced during the first two months of calendar year 2022. That is down a bit from the 23 recorded during the first two months of 2021.
For the first five months of fiscal 2022, which started Oct. 1, 2021, WIPP had received 79 shipments. Management at WIPP has said it hopes to hasten the pace of shipments by the middle of this calendar year, when it starts disposing of waste in Panel 8 and leaves Panel 7 which was contaminated by an underground radiation leak during February 2014.
