Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently finished removing 346,000 gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from Tank AX-101, the 21st single-shell tank to be emptied at Hanford, DOE said this week.
The retrieval project was completed by June, DOE said in a Tuesday press release. Amentum-led contractor Washington River Protection Solutions started emptying the last single-shell tank at the AX Farm in January 2023. The waste was transferred to a double-shell tank.
The Department of Energy in June disposed of the 14,000th shipment of defense-related transuranic waste at its deep underground salt mine site near Carlsbad, N.M., the agency said this week.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) hitting 14,000 shipments “marks an important milestone in our mission to clean up the country’s legacy waste dating back to World War II and Cold War eras,” the head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, Mark Bollinger said in a Tuesday press release from DOE. Shipment No. 14,000 arrived June 14, a WIPP spokesperson said in a Wednesday email.
During 2023, WIPP recorded its busiest year with 489 shipments, since a February 2014 underground fire and radiation leak forced the disposal site offline for about three years. Despite a month-long maintenance outage, WIPP is running slightly ahead of the 2023 pace through May. Transuranic waste includes old clothes, rags, debris and tools remaining from handling radioactive items.
The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico and the prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will hold their next town-hall-style public meeting at the end of July.
The hybrid meeting will provide an update on disposal of defense-related transuranic waste and related issues at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), according to an email notice from DOE and Bechtel-led Salado Isolation Mining Contractors.
The session will take place at the Skeen-Whitlock Building Auditorium, 4021 National Parks Highway, Carlsbad, N.M., at 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time on July 30. A Zoom link is available for virtual participation. The 10-year state permit that took effect in November 2023 calls upon WIPP managers to conduct such public outreach meetings on a regular basis.
