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.
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.
