I have blogged before about the U.S. Department of Energy’s permanent defense related nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. It is located about twenty six miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico in an area that contains several other nuclear facilities. It is the only permanent deep geological nuclear waste repository in the United States since the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Repository project in Nevada a few years ago. The WIPP is the third deep geological nuclear repository in the world and the only one currently operating after Germany closed two deep repositories because of unforeseen problems.
The USDOE started studying the New Mexico site in 1973. The area is an ancient salt deposit left from a dried-up sea. The salt formation is capable of some motion and deformation but scientists think that such plasticity might help seal off cracks and crevices created during the construction of the WIPP. Test wells were drilled and the specific location for the WIPP in the salt deposit was moved a number of times as a result of the tests. In 1978, the New Mexico Environmental Evaluation Group (EEG) was created to oversee the WIPP and the group double checked the DOE work to ally public fears over the construction of such a facility.
In 1979, Congress authorized the construction of the WIPP. At that time, the type of waste that would be stored at the WIPP was redefined from “high temperature” to low level waste known as “transuranic.” This includes tools, clothing and machinery that is contaminated with man-made elements during the processing of uranium and plutonium. Such waste is not as dangerous as nuclear reactor byproducts but it still remains radioactive for around twenty four thousand years. Changing the type of waste that could be stored at the WIPP allowed a loosing of the rules and a speed up of work. Even so, the regulations were far more stringent than had originally been proposed. There was a delay in the initial tests of waste storage cause by public concern, but testing did begin in 1991. The facility could not be opened for waste storage until Congress gave its approval in 1993. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was given final authority over the WIPP. In 1994, Sandia National Laboratory was charged by Congress with running a final series of tests and evaluations of the site in accord with the EPA regulations. In 1998, the WIPP was declared ready to receive waste. The first shipment of waste arrived in 1999.
Tons of waste in steel containers have been moved from various nuclear defense laboratories and production facilities to the WIPP since 1999. The fifty six storerooms are about two hundred feet long and the whole facility is about two thousand feed underground. Over three million cubic feet of transuranic wastes are currently stored at the WIPP. The sixth set of rooms is rapidly filling up and new set of seven rooms has been completed and will start receiving waste this summer.
There has been an attempt to ship transuranic waste from buried tanks at Hanford to the WIPP. There is a prohibition in place at the WIPP against receiving the contents of the buried tanks at Hanford. The fear is that the contents of the tanks are not well known and that if there is any liquid in the shipments from Hanford, the ability of the WIPP to safely and permanently contain its transuranic waste will be compromised. Hanford authorities have tried to reassure the WIPP that there will be no liquids in the waste they want to ship but the WIPP has still declined to accept Hanford waste.
Casks containing waste arrive at WIPP:
