WIPP’s Legacy Transuranic Waste Disposal Plan is Inadequate; Submit Your Comments by Friday, January 3rd, 2025
A new condition in 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 Waste Disposal Plan to the Environment Department. DOE submitted its Plan on November 4th, 2024 for a 60-day public comment period.
Your electronic public comments may be submitted to DOE on or before Friday, January 3, 2025 to LTWDP@wipp.doe.gov. Sample public comments you can use are available on the Stop Forever WIPP website. https://stopforeverwipp.org/take-action-1
The comments that have already been submitted 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
DOE will submit the Plan and comments to the Environment Department before the end of January. The Environment Department will review them to determine whether DOE has met the permit requirements for the Plan.
The purpose of the Plan is for DOE to define legacy transuranic, or TRU, waste and legacy TRU mixed waste. Transuranic, or plutonium-contaminated, TRU waste is generated through the research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and because it contains plutonium, it must be disposed in a deep geologic facility, like WIPP, to prevent exposure to it and other radioactive elements. Many people have defined “legacy” waste as waste generated and managed as of 1999, the year WIPP opened.
DOE’s plan to define legacy waste fails to comply with the hazardous waste permit requirements. DOE’s definition is explicitly intended to include as legacy waste whatever any DOE site describes as legacy, including waste generated 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.
Many people are concerned about the delayed efforts to get transuranic waste “off the hill” at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Currently 2,025 TRU waste containers are located in the fabric tents at LANL’s Area G disposal site. https://n3b-la.com/area-g-tru/
As we prepare to review the 25th year since the Cerro Grande fire burned over 7,000 acres at LANL, it is important to ask why 2,025 TRU waste containers remain stored aboveground at Area G. The May 2000 fire came within a half-mile of the fabric tents.
While getting legacy waste off the hill is a priority for the public, it is not for DOE. It has instead prioritized shipping newly generated waste from nuclear weapons fabrication to WIPP over legacy waste.
It is also important that your comments support another new permit condition that requires WIPP to provide a detailed report on its progress to site another repository for TRU waste in a state other than New Mexico. By December 31st of each year, WIPP is required to submit the Repository Siting Annual Report to the Environment Department. DOE has waffled about whether this report will be posted on the WIPP website. The Environment Department has stated it will post the report on its website. https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp/
Make time to submit your comments on the Plan. Together we are making a difference!
- Friday, December 27th 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!
- 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, get 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, Repository Siting Annual Report, Stop Forever WIPP Coalition, surplus plutonium, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, WIPP
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