The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., last week emplaced its last shipment of defense-related transuranic waste into Panel 7, the underground work area left contaminated by a radiation leak in February 2014.
“Last week, last Thursday to be specific, the last waste was placed in panel 7,” said Sean Dunagan, president and project manager for the prime contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), Nuclear Waste Partnership, during an online forum Monday evening.
“For those of us familiar with WIPP, you will know that this is a big milestone for us,” Dunagan said. “The employees will no longer have to wear some of the PPE, the [personal] protective equipment they have to wear, while disposing of waste in Panel 8.”
When a waste drum from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico overheated and ruptured during February 2014 it contaminated much of Panel 7 and also forced WIPP to suspend disposal work for about three years.
A WIPP spokesperson said last week the New Mexico Environment Department has certified the newly-mined Panel 8 to start receiving transuranic waste and Panel 8 disposal should start by early November.
During his opening comments from the forum that was webcast from the Buffalo Thunder Casino and Resort in Santa Fe, Dunagan did not say exactly when disposal will commence in Panel 8.
Panel 7 holds more than 20,000 containers and 13,000 of those are 55-gallon drums, DOE said in a Tuesday press release. The old panel was filled from the back, starting with Room 7 and ending with Room 1. Closing Panel 7 entails installation of two metal bulkheads, used to help control underground airflow, as well as placing 100 feet of salt from floor to ceiling.
About 160,000 tons of salt must be mined to carve out a new underground panel, DOE said.
The online forum Monday, co-hosted by DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office manager Reinhard Knerr, was something of a do-over from a July public forum where presentations from DOE and the contractor took up about an hour, leaving only a few minutes for the public to ask questions or vent concerns about WIPP. The last forum probably overdid it on WIPP slide presentations, Knerr said.
This time around, the opening presentations from DOE and its WIPP prime together took up about 10 minutes, with most of the two-hour program devoted to questions and comments from the public.
Some members of the public lamented the fact the forum lacked any presentation from the National Nuclear Security Administration on transuranic waste generated from planned plutonium pit production at Los Alamos as well as the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Knerr seemed to indicate WIPP will have sufficient room to accommodate both legacy waste and new waste generated from ongoing nuclear weapons work.
Also, in response to various inquiries, DOE and contractor managers said drilling for oil or natural gas is forbidden inside of WIPP’s 16-mile footprint.
