The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could go offline for a major ventilation upgrade right around the time the Los Alamos National Laboratory starts casting new nuclear weapon cores and generating a slew of new defense transuranic waste, a lab official said Wednesday at the online Waste Management Symposia conference. "As we progress in our nuclear production mission, the amount of [transuranic] waste we're going to generate is going to be significantly higher, compared to what we're generating today," Peter Carson, deputy division leader for nuclear process infrastructure for Triad, said during a panel discussion Wednesday. "And if you look at the peak in the 2023, 2024 timeframe, that also happens to be about the time WIPP [the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant] is going down for a major ventilation upgrade."
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