More New Mexico Cold War waste should be sent to WIPP, officials say

Hundreds of shipments of nuclear waste were buried at a facility near Carlsbad in 2024, and the federal government was poised to send even more waste to the site in 2024.

For that work, the Department of Energy’s contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors (SIMCO) earned about $11.5 million or about 89% of its available $13 million fee between Feb. 4, 2023 when SIMCO took over the contract and the end of the last federal fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2023.

DOE records show 479 shipments of transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste were received at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, from federal labs and other nuclear facilities around the U.S.

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TRU waste is made of clothing materials, equipment and other debris irradiated during nuclear activities, and it is buried in a salt deposit at WIPP about 2,000 feet underground.

The DOE said in 2023 it worked to increase shipments to 17 per week, and hold that level in the coming years.

Most of the waste, about 79%, came from Idaho National Laboratory in the form of 377 waste shipments.

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The next-highest shipment load came from Los Alamos National Laboratory at 50 shipments last year, followed by the Savannah River Site in South Carolina with 27 shipments.

That means about 90% of the waste sent to WIPP in southeast New Mexico came from outside the state.

Last year, amid negotiations for WIPP’s next 10-year operations permit with the New Mexico Environment Department, NMED sought to set aside space at WIPP for Los Alamos waste to ensure that facility saw adequate benefit from the repository New Mexico hosts.

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DOE officials countered that no backlog of waste ready for shipment and disposal at WIPP was left at Los Alamos, which frequently averaged up to two weekly shipments throughout 2023.

And that could increase in the coming years as Los Alamos, along with Savannah River, was where the DOE planned to increase the production of plutonium pits – triggers for nuclear warheads – by 2030.

But that would be newly generated waste different from the existing or “legacy waste” leftover from the Cold War which WIPP was originally intended for, said Don Hancock with the Southwest Research and Information Center.

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He argued only four shipments of such legacy waste were sent from Los Alamos since the new permit took effect late last year.

“That’s pretty pathetic. I would say so far they’re going poorly in that regard,” Hancock said of prioritizing Los Alamos waste. Virtually all of the shipments have been from Idaho and Savannah River.”

This year, the DOE was required by the NMED permit to submit a plan to define “legacy waste” by November and Hancock said that report could show that WIPP planned to dispose of more waste than it can legally hold.

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“There’s this question of what gets priority,” he said. “The state and a lot of people think legacy waste needs to be prioritized.”

At the same time, the DOE is required via the same permit to submit an update on potential progress in finding a new repository outside of New Mexico, a report Hancock predicted would show the federal government is not pursuing such a project.

“The state is going in that direction. That’s going to be a tough one for them to handle,” he said of the requirement. “They’re going to have to say everything will fit in WIPP.”

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Thus, the two reports due in November could contradict each other, Hancock said.

“They’re going to be hard-pressed to have two contradictory reports,” he said.

But for now, the DOE appeared to prioritize waste from Idaho National Laboratory for disposal at WIPP, and Hancock said that could continue in the next fiscal year based on the current structure of bonuses earned by SIMCO.

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That structure sees SIMCO earn $5,500 per waste shipment received and emplaced at WIPP, up to 520 shipments, according to the WIPP Performance Evaluation Management Plan (PEMP) reviewed by the Carlsbad Current-Argus.

It also provides another $7,000 per Los Alamos shipment received, up to 40 such shipments from that site.

Hancock contended SIMCO was likely to hit the Los Alamos cap, then take waste “wherever it can get it” to the 520-shipment cap, to maximize the bonus payments.

“I would argue the bonus structure for this next fiscal year does not prioritize Los Alamos,” he said.

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Shipments from Idaho were recently accelerated, as the laboratory sought to move waste away from that facility because many of the shipping containers were reaching the age limit allowable to be sent with “overpacking” or adding an additional protective drum around the shipment, according to the lab’s November report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

Earlier last fall, shipments from Idaho were reduced from 12 per week to seven due to budgetary restrictions, read the report, but were restored in mid-November.

“They’re hurrying to get as many waste drums out of there as they can to avoid overpacking,” Hancock said.

The DOE also faces numerous deadlines to get waste out of Idaho per a 1995 settlement agreement with the state and federal government.

Mark Bollinger, manager of the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office said he believed WIPP met and exceeded its waste disposal goals in 2023, particularly at Los Alamos.

“WIPP’s mission to safely receive and dispose of waste shipments is instrumental to cleanup efforts at Los Alamos and other waste-generating sites, and we safely exceeded our goal at WIPP in 2023,” he said in a December statement.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on the social media platform X.