Nuclear waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) near San Francisco, California resumed this month after a 10-year pause.
The waste was received at WIPP and will be permanently disposed of in the underground repository about 2,000 feet beneath the surface reported the Carlsbad Current-Argus.
The resumption of shipments from LLNL was the result of a multi-year project and collaboration between the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO), WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the NNSA’s Livermore Field Office, read a DOE news release.
LLNL is primarily a research laboratory that generates transuranic (TRU) waste during its research and engineering operations related to nuclear weapons, plutonium and other technological aspects of the DOE’s nuclear complex.
The Laboratory’s last TRU waste shipments were made in 2010, and the site accumulated newly-generated waste since which was stored onsite.
Livermore’s waste storage facilities were expected to reach capacity this year, and research operations could be impacted by a lack of ability to store waste.
Source: Carlsbad Current-Argus