WIPP aims to expand nuclear waste facility

A plan to build two new areas to dispose of nuclear waste began taking shape at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant after the U.S. Department of Energy published a report on the feasibility of adding an 11th and 12th waste panel to the underground nuclear waste repository, the Carlsbad CurrentArgus reports.

At WIPP, low-level transuranic waste made up of equipment and materials radiated during nuclear activities is permanently emplaced in an underground salt deposit more than 2,000 feet underground.

In its original design, WIPP was planned to have eight panels for such disposal, but much of that space was restricted and abandoned following an accidental radiological release in 2014 that contaminated parts of the underground and led to a threeyear pause of WIPP’s emplacement operations.

The DOE estimated that 1.8 panels were lost in the incident for a total of 30,861 cubic meters of lost storage capacity.

The two new panels would be used to replace the space lost in the incident, amid ongoing emplacement in the seventh panel and mining of the eighth panel expected to be complete in 2021.

A DOE-published supplemental analysis released on April 8 reported the new panels “do not represent a substantial change and will not impact the environment in a significant manner not already evaluated,” a news release said.

The analysis contended a previous environmental impact statement from 1997 that analyzed mining the initial panels was adequate for the two new panels and no new impact studies were needed.