EPA approves more nuclear waste storage at New Mexico WIPP site

The only permanent nuclear waste storage site in the country, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, has federal approval to add two new underground storage areas.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, stores radioactive waste, like tools or protective clothing that were contaminated with radioactive elements, in underground salt chambers.

At the end of July, the Environmental Protection Agency greenlit a Department of Energy request to add two new underground areas for nuclear waste storage at WIPP. The extra storage was needed because a storage area was contaminated in 2014 and could no longer be used, according to DOE.

WIPP began storing transuranic waste in 1999. Half a mile below the earth are storage areas called panels. Each panel has seven rooms. The rooms are 13 feet high, 33 feet wide and 300 feet long. When panels are filled with waste containers, workers close them and salt naturally fills in the space, helping trap the waste. The approval allows WIPP to build two more panels.

Both the EPA and the New Mexico Environment Department regulate WIPP.

New Mexico already approved the two new storage areas in 2023, with the condition that one of the areas should prioritize legacy waste, waste produced during the Cold War and the Manhattan Project instead of in new weapon development. The state also required DOE to create a clear definition of legacy waste.

But state Environment Secretary James Kenney does not think DOE has held up its end of the bargain.

“We renegotiated a permit in good faith that would focus on legacy waste and prioritize (Los Alamos National Laboratory),” Kenney said.

In particular, NMED officials want an 11-acre unlined dump with radioactive and toxic waste from the 1940s through 1970s dug up and disposed of at WIPP. Last year, DOE proposed covering the dump instead, a strategy NMED said would not be adequate. Then DOE withdrew its plan to clean up the area, called MDA-C, and turned its attention to other legacy waste projects, something Kenney thinks is a stall tactic.

To comply with the permit agreement, DOE also sent New Mexico a legacy waste disposal plan last year.

NMED’s Hazardous Waste Bureau Chief John David Nance asked for revisions to the plan in May. One of the issues Nance identified was an overly broad definition of legacy waste. He asked for a response from NMED by November.

Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, was disappointed by the federal approval but not surprised. Hancock wanted the EPA to use a more extensive rulemaking process to make the decision.

WIPP was not originally intended to be the only permanent storage site for nuclear waste and by law isn’t able to store high level radioactive waste or commercially produced nuclear waste. The law that created WIPP, the Land Withdrawal Act, set its capacity at 6.2 million cubic feet of transuranic waste.

But Hancock is concerned that if DOE does not find another permanent waste repository or permanent waste storage for higher level radioactive waste, the federal government will try to turn to New Mexico for even more nuclear waste storage.

“Two panels on the one hand doesn’t seem like such a big deal … but it’s part of this bigger situation of we need people in the federal government — DOE, EPA, Congress — to understand that New Mexico isn’t going to take it all,” Hancock said. “We’re giving you more than adequate warning that you’ve got to be working on someplace else.”