New Mexico wants assurance transuranic waste, held 10 years at a commercial storage facility in Texas, won’t pose an ignition threat before signing off on shipment to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.

As a result, DOE is now facing pressure from both Texas and New Mexico. The Texas attorney general has been pushing DOE to move the remaining 74 containers of transuranic waste away from Waste Control Specialists. DOE has said it will do so by the end of 2026, but now the agency is running up against new authority New Mexico got from the WIPP permit it issued the federal agency last year.

“The WCS cannot show up at the WIPP [Waste Isolation Pilot Plant] until DOE and [its contractor] SIMCO demonstrate compliance with our permit,” state Environment Secretary James Kenney said in a statement emailed Wednesday to the Exchange Monitor. 

A New Mexico Environment Department spokesman said Wednesday the state is awaiting replies to recent letters to DOE field office managers in the state and DOE’s WIPP prime, Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors.

WIPP’s state permit prohibits disposal of waste showing traits of potential corrosion or ignition, Richard Maestas, acting head of the Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau, said. He cited state concerns in a March 20 letter to DOE managers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A nearly-identical letter was sent Feb. 29 to the WIPP contractor and the head of DOE’s Carlsbad field office.

“It is imperative” DOE provide adequate documentation on technology proposed “to remove hazardous waste codes” from the 74 containers at Waste Control Specialists since 2014, Maestas said.

This is a big deal, Maestas said, given the waste comes from the same remediated nitrate salt waste stream at Los Alamos as the drum that overheated, ruptured and caused WIPP’s underground radiation leak on Valentine’s Day 2014. The accident forced the disposal site offline for about three years.

Like the drum in the 2014 WIPP accident, the containers at Waste Control Specialists were originally remediated with kitty litter, Maestas added. Los Alamos contractors Triad National Security and Newport News Nuclear-BWXT-Los Alamos have responsibility for waste generated by the lab. The Los Alamos transuranic waste in question was bound for WIPP when the 2014 accident happened and was rerouted to Waste Control Specialists.

DOE has received the New Mexico letters and will respond to its information requests, said a DOE spokesperson in a Wednesday evening email. The federal agency “remains committed to removing the TRU waste from WCS in a manner that is protective of the workforce, the environment and the public, while remaining in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

For more than four years, Texas officials have said the waste has worn out its welcome.

New Mexico and DOE “successfully negotiated a ten-year renewal permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) that prioritizes cleanup and emplacement of legacy waste from our state,” Kenney said. “Until the Department of Energy realizes that all roads lead from WIPP — not to WIPP — they will continue to stumble with their permit implementation.”