You may hear it called nuclear garbage or plutonium-contaminated waste, but transuranic waste is the official name of a specific type of radioactive waste created from processing of nuclear materials.

Because of changes in waste classifications and gaps in record keeping, estimates of transuranic waste buried at INL prior to 1970 are rough at best. A rough estimated of the combined volume of transuranic and alpha-contaminated low level waste buried in the Subsurface Disposal Area (SDA) at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC) is about 57,000 cubic meters.

Under the terms of the Settlement Agreement, all of the transuranic waste must be treated and shipped out of the state of Idaho by 2018. It is a huge job, unlike any radioactive waste shipping campaign faced at INL, or anywhere else, before. The waste is being shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, which has been designed to permanently store transuranic waste to prevent human contact.

Much of the TRU waste at INL requires treatment before it can be shipped to WIPP. The INL’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) tackles much of that job. BBWI is the current DOE contractor responsible for operating AMWTP.

At the AMWTP, each container of waste is prepared and examined prior to approval for shipping to WIPP. BBWI must verify records about the waste's generation and contents and decide how to treat each container of waste based upon what it finds during waste characterization. Waste may be repackaged, sized (cut into smaller pieces), supercompacted (squashed to reduce waste volume) or stabilized by adding material to absorb liquids. Most of the waste—about 70%—will be supercompacted. This treatment reduces the number of shipments required and also reduces the disposal space required at WIPP.

Waste that does not contain enough plutonium and other transuranics to qualify for disposal at WIPP will be sent to a low-level waste disposal facility (Energy Solutions) in Utah or another disposal site. There are some wastes the AMWTP cannot treat so these wastes will be set aside until DOE decides how to manage them to meet shipping and disposal requirements. 

DOE plans to treat transuranic waste that requires remote handling at a separate facility at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC).

Under the terms of their operating permits with Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality, the AMWTP and INTEC are regularly inspected to ensure that they are meeting all of the regulations pertaining to hazardous waste treatment.

Idaho's 1995 court settlement requires DOE to remove all transuranic waste from Idaho.  The settlement also sets interim shipment deadlines to ensure DOE remains on track, requiring an average (over three years) of 2,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste out of Idaho each year after the year 2000. As of October 2007, over 19,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste has left INL for disposal in WIPP. For WIPP transportation information, go to http://www.wipp.energy.gov/transport.htm.