The US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) has announced that the last transuranic waste containers has been emplaced in Panel 7 of the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Crews carefully stacked the last column of transuranic (TRU) waste containers in the panel’s final disposal room, completing emplacement activities prior to the panel’s being permanently sealed.
“This important milestone has been a long time coming,” said Carlsbad Field Office Manager Reinhard Knerr. “Filling Panel 7 allows us to continue our important national mission of disposing of transuranic waste, which ensures people living near sites where TRU waste is currently stored are safer today because of WIPP’s role in EM’s nuclear waste clean-up strategy.”
Emplacement activities next move to the newly mined Panel 8, which received official certification from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) in August. NMED regulates the disposal of radioactive and hazardous mixed waste at WIPP.“This is a tremendous milestone and marks the beginning of a new day at WIPP,” said Sean Dunagan, president and project manager for Nuclear Waste Partnership, WIPP’s management and operations contractor.
Dunagan also expressed appreciation for local communities, waste generator sites across the DOE complex and the National Transuranic Programme. EM established that program to oversee the process of preparing TRU waste from waste generator sites to meet WIPP requirements, and provide guidance and requirements for receiving the waste at the underground waste repository.
One waste disposal room, carved from a thick layer of salt, is 33 feet wide, 13 feet high and 300 feet long. Crews filled Panel 7 from the back, starting with Room 7, to the front, ending with Room 1. Creating a panel requires mining nearly 160,000 tons of salt.
More than 2,600 waste containers are emplaced in Room 1, ranging from stacks of 55-gallon drums — 729 drums in total — to four 11,000-pound boxes transported in WIPP’s largest shipping cask, the TRUPACT-III. The total numbers of containers in Panel 7 is 20,056. The most common containers, the 55-gallon drums, total almost 13,000.
Closure of Panel 7 will include standing up two metal bulkheads and adding 100 feet of salt from floor to ceiling. Bulkheads are used to control airflow through air circuits in the facility’s underground, 2,150 feet beneath the surface.
TRU waste began accumulating in the 1940s with the beginning of the nation’s nuclear defence programme. It comprises debris, residues, soil, and other items contaminated with radioactive elements that have atomic numbers greater than uranium.
Image: Workers pose with the last TRU waste containers to be emplaced in Panel 7 of WIPP (courtesy of DOE)
