At WIPP, the waste is delivered from facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Energy around the country and buried in an underground salt deposit which gradually collapses and encases the waste permanently.
By: | currentargus.com March 15, 2021
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant halted waste emplacement and handling operations for the last month at the nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad while an array of maintenance projects was completed.
The facility, which permanently disposes of low-level transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste about 2,000 feet underground, planned the outage for about two months until April 14 to allow workers to complete routine upgrades to its infrastructure and other needed work.
During the two-month pause, WIPP planned on 97 activities from six departments including mine operations, waste handling, hoisting, work control, safety and engineering.
Site-wide power outages were implemented to allow for maintenance on WIPP’s electrical components.
About three weeks into the six-week outage, WIPP outage manager Andy Copper said work was proceeding as planned and it would allow for the continued success of WIPP’s mission to dispose of the nation’s TRU waste.
TRU waste is made up clothing items, towels, equipment and other materials radiated during nuclear operations.
At WIPP, the waste is delivered from facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Energy around the country and buried in an underground salt deposit which gradually collapses and encases the waste permanently.
Maintenance checks and upgrades are routinely completed while waste emplacement is ongoing, but WIPP schedules an outage annually for projects that cannot be completed safety during the facility’s primary operations.
“We are making great progress to complete the almost 100 activities planned for the annual long maintenance break,” Cooper said. “All the work is critical to ensure all systems are working properly to support WIPP’s important national mission.”
What are the major projects achieved by WIPP so far?
- Waste pallets are moved around the WIPP underground using rails like those for trains.
- During the outage, maintenance crews began removing about 170 feet of rails and leveling the salt floor.
- Once the floor was leveled, a base layer of gravel was added before the rails were reinstalled.
- A battery exhaust was also replaced at the waste handling building, which was expected to take about two weeks.
Meanwhile, a 13.8-kilovolt feeder cable between two onsite electrical substations was repaired and tested while air pressure instrumentation was replaced..
As of March, mechanical and electrical inspections were completed on four contact-handled waste bay dock cranes, while dock instrumentation was calibrated, and two ventilation fan filters were replaced..
Mechanical inspections of the supplementation ventilation system fan were completed, along with two others used to provide airflow to the underground..
Eight bulkheads used to direct airflow to the WIPP underground were inspected.
“This is most definitely one of the longest outages we have had in several years. The others have typically run four to five weeks,” Cooper said.
How much waste did WIPP take in before the outage?
Since January, WIPP received 23 shipments of waste at the site, per its public database.
Twelve waste shipments came from Idaho National Laboratory while 10 came from Los Alamos National Laboratory and one from the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews, Texas.
Twenty of those shipments came in January.
The month before in December 2020, WIPP received 10 shipments of waste and 15 in November.
Since the beginning of the year, 582 containers of waste were emplaced – 398 in January and 184 so far this month.
In November 2020, WIPP emplaced 486 containers of waste and 211 in December of last year.