nuclear-news

Cold War nuclear waste is prioritized at Carlsbad-area repository. How much is there?

Ed comment. This article is yet another example of what a mess the nuclear industry really is!.

Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus

Concerns were raised by government watchdog groups for a plan to dispose of Cold War nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant repository in southeast New Mexico, as the federal government could soon generate more new waste through weapons development that would also need disposal.

In a recent 10-year renewal of the Department of Energy’s permit with the New Mexico Environment Department for WIPP’s operations, the NMED added a mandate to prioritize “legacy waste” held for decades at DOE sites and ensure there was adequate space in the underground for its disposal.

At a Dec. 13 public meeting held in Carlsbad and virtually, required by the new permit enacted Nov. 3, DOE and WIPP officials sought input on officially defining legacy waste and how it would be disposed of at WIPP.

:More than 400 shipments of nuclear waste came to Carlsbad-area repository in 2023

Joni Arends with New Mexico-based Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety argued the DOE had held inadequate public meetings with the generator sites, and needed to work quicker to determine how much legacy waste was needing disposal around the U.S.

“You’ve got to do more to get people involved in this very important issue so that we have a complete inventory by the due date in November 2024,” she said.

The permit specified that a legacy waste disposal plan must be developed and submitted to NMED a  year after the permit takes effect, and reserved Panel 12 for the disposal of this waste.

That panel was one of two new panels approved for mining in the permit, intended to replace space lost to contamination in a 2014 incident……………………………………………………………………

Edward Holbrook, with the Department of Ecology’s nuclear waste program at Washington State University said legacy waste is not officially defined at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington.

He proposed meetings at the local level as the project moves forward to better determine what the term meant to specific sites, and how much of the waste was present.

“I don’t have those answers right now,” Holbrook said.

Former-NMED scientist Steve Zappe said during the meeting the legacy waste requirement was added to the permit amid concerns that newer streams of waste, such as from increased plutonium pit production at Los Alamos and other facilities, could take up space originally intended for older waste.

“Newly-generated waste which might be easier to dispose of could displace legacy waste which is maybe difficult to characterize or retrieve,” he said.

Tom Clements, executive director at Savannah River Site Watch, a government watchdog group focused on the DOE facility in South Carolina, worried an ongoing project to “down-blend” or dilute surplus weapons-grade plutonium at the facility could result in excess waste needing disposal.

This new stream would likely not be considered legacy waste, and Clements argued the DOE would need to find a process to balance such emerging needs, including planned pit production at Savannah River.

“This is not legacy material,” Clements said. “The pit-TRU is not included. I wonder how the plutonium down-blended material is going to be categorized. To me it is not legacy waste.”

Chavez agreed that the wastes Clements mentioned were not legacy waste.

That could be a problem, said Don Hancock with the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.

Hancock pointed to a 2020 study from the National Academies of Science finding there may not be enough space at WIPP for the waste the DOE plans to produce in the coming years.  https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2023/12/28/cold-war-nuclear-waste-disposed-of-new-mexico-amid-space-concerns/72014679007/

December 30, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes