WIPP Facility Ideal for Plutonium Disposal say Federal Regulators

摘要

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could be U.S.' best option for disposing of surplus plutonium through a program the Department of Energy is developing that would see the waste diluted at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina before permanent emplacement at the WIPP facility in southeast New Mexico. Last week, the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) released the results of a two-year review of the DOE's plans, reporting the idea was feasible with some adjustments as to the space available at WIPP and the expected time the facility would remain open. Robert Dynes, who chaired the NAS' committee commissioned by the DOE to study the plan, pointed to a need for more space at WIPP to hold the additional waste, and its non-compliance with the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, a deal between the U.S. and Russia to dispose of plutonium using jointly-approve methods. "The dilute and dispose plan is not technically complex. The true challenges lay in the many mostly nontechnical threads that are connected to the technical plan," Dynes wrote in the study's preface.