WIEB’s WIPP TAG submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Energy Carlsbad Field Office (DOE-CBFO) on the Legacy TRU (transuranic) Waste Disposal Plan, a document that DOE-CBFO put together in response to a condition submitted by the New Mexico Environment Department in the WIPP Hazardous Waste Facility Permit. The TAG’s comments stressed that “plutonium declared excess to national security and purposefully made unavailable and unsuitable for the purpose of re-use in nuclear weapons” – i.e., surplus plutonium – should only be prioritized for disposal in the WIPP panel reserved for legacy TRU waste after any available inventories of TRU waste from the cleanup of legacy nuclear weapons production sites such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Hanford Site.
