02 Apr DOE formally approves 6 tons of waste to WIPP

Maddy Hayden,
Carlsbad Current-Argus 5:01 p.m. MDT April 1, 2016

CARLSBAD — The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received some good news on Wednesday: the Department of Energy formally approved a plan to deliver six tons of non-pit plutonium to the plant once the facility is reopened.

WIPP officials said they are working towards a December 2016 opening date. The facility was closed after a fire and radiation leak in early 2014.

The Record of Decision, signed by Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Frank Klotz, outlines a “path forward” for the six tons of waste.

The plutonium approved for shipment is currently being stored at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Francie Israeli, National Nuclear Safety Administration spokeswoman, said the facility will need additional equipment installed before it can begin downblending. After being downblended, it will be emplaced at WIPP, a process that could take years.

“This is nothing imminent,” said John Heaton, chair of the Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, adding no money in the 2016 federal budget was appropriated to begin the downblending process in South Carolina.

The six tons of waste in the Record of Decision released by the Department of Energy on Wednesday are not part of the 34 tons of plutonium that the United States is planning to destroy per an agreement with Russia and is not weapons grade plutonium, meaning it is not pure enough to use in a weapon.

The news is a relief to the Department of Energy, which is being fined $1 million daily by South Carolina since Jan. 1 for failing to remove one metric ton of plutonium by that date.

“This ROD (Record of Decision) allows DOE/NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) to continue its progress on the disposition of surplus weapons usable plutonium by establishing a clear, systematic course to ultimately remove 6 metric tons of surplus plutonium for final disposal at WIPP,” a National Nuclear Security Administration fact sheet on the Record Decision reads.

Heaton said the decision was an expected, but welcome one.

City councilors and county commissioners passed resolutions supporting the plan in January.

“The issue of what to do with this material has been in discussion for a very long time. We’ve been aware of this potential as a community, and understand very well that this material will meet all criteria of what can come to WIPP,” Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway said in an emailed statement. “WIPP has received downblended plutonium before, and in anticipation of this Record of Decision, the Carlsbad City Council and Eddy County Commission both recently passed supportive resolutions.”

Heaton said WIPP already contains around three tons of material similar to the non-pit plutonium in the Record of Decision. Pit plutonium makes up the implosive core of nuclear weapons.

The decision on whether to proceed with building a Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and convert the remaining seven tons of plutonium to nuclear fuel or to scrap the project and downblend it instead has not yet been made.