WIPP’s Legacy Transuranic Waste Disposal Plan Demonstrates DOE’s Broken Promises; Get Your Comments in by Friday, January 3rd, 2025
The New Mexico Environment Department’s hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to submit a Legacy Transuranic, or TRU, Waste Disposal Plan to the Environment Department. DOE submitted its inadequate plan on November 4th for a 60-day public comment period, which ends on Friday, January 3rd, 2025. https://wipp.energy.gov/Library/documents/2024/24-0772-s.pdf
A sample public comment letter you can use to create your comments is available here. 241230 LegacyWasteDisposalPlan SampleLetter
The DOE plan ignores the promises DOE made to New Mexicans. WIPP was sold as a pilot project to clean up Cold War legacy radioactive and hazardous waste at DOE’s nuclear weapons sites located across the country. It was a test case for the deep geologic disposal of transuranic, or plutonium-contaminated, nuclear waste made during the Cold War. DOE promised it would cleanup all its transuranic waste, ship it to WIPP for disposal and close WIPP after 25 years of operations. WIPP opened in 1999 and was scheduled to close in 2024.
But DOE changed its mind. DOE now wants to keep WIPP open until at least 2083 for the transuranic waste created by fabricating new plutonium triggers, or pits, for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. 
DOE is ignoring its promises and the buried transuranic waste at LANL that needs to be packaged and shipped to WIPP. Further, there are 2,025 transuranic waste containers stored aboveground in the Area G fabric tents in a wildfire zone. https://n3b-la.com/area-g-tru/
New Mexicans can challenge DOE’s plan through the WIPP Hazardous Waste Permit and the three new permit conditions that address the need for another nuclear waste repository in a state other than New Mexico; the need to prioritize and reduce risk of transuranic waste stored in New Mexico; 
and the need for a Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan that prioritizes disposal of Cold War legacy waste over newly generated nuclear waste, including at LANL. https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp-permit-page/ , see permit conditions 2.14.3 Repository Siting Annual Report; 4.2.1.4 Prioritization and Risk Reduction of New Mexico Waste; and 4.2.1.5 Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan on the attached. 240924 NMED WIPP HazWaste Renewal Permit Conditions
DOE’s plan fails to define legacy waste. DOE’s definition is explicitly intended to include as legacy waste whatever any DOE site describes as legacy, including waste ge
nerated more than a decade after WIPP opened. The plan also includes as legacy waste “surplus” plutonium that DOE plans to ship and process at LANL and dispose of at WIPP.
DOE will submit the public comments to the Environment Department before the end of January. The Environment Department will determine whether DOE met the permit requirements for the plan.
The public comments that have been submitted so far are available on the WIPP homepage at the third blue box labeled “Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan” or at https://wipp.energy.gov/Legacy-TRU-Waste-Disposal-Plan.asp
- Start the New Year off right and join us on Friday, January 3rd at noon
at the intersection of West Alameda and Sandoval for the weekly one-hour peaceful protest for nuclear disarmament. Join the weekly peaceful protest with Veterans for Peace, CCNS, Nuclear Watch NM, Loretto Community, New Mexico Peace Fest, Pax Christi and others. Bring your flags, signs and banners and join in the conversation for nuclear disarmament.
- Possibly the third week of January –
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock Announcement.
“In truth, the Doomsday Clock is a global alarm clock. We need to wake up – and get to work.” Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, February 6, 2023.
Tags: 025 TRU waste containers, 2, 25th anniversary, Cold War, getting waste “off the hill” Area G, LANL, Legacy Transuranic (TRU) Waste Disposal Plan, legacy waste, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LTWDP, May 2000 Cerro Grande fire, New Mexico Environment Department, newly generated waste, NMED, plutonium-contaminated waste, Prioritization and Risk Reduction of New Mexico Waste, Repository Siting Annual Report, Savannah River Site, SRS, Stop Forever WIPP Coalition, surplus plutonium, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, WIPP
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