Waste Isolation Pilot Plant | Wikimedia Commons
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant | Wikimedia Commons
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is planning to shut down its waste acceptance operations for at least four weeks in order to devote time and resources to multiple other maintenance projects at the facility.
The Associated Press reports the New Mexico-based plant is expected to “cease its primary operations of receiving and disposing transuranic nuclear waste" from Feb. 14 to March 15.
Among the new projects the company is expected to deal with over that time are replacing one of six head ropes at the facility’s waste hoist and performing electrical work on power substations. Work is also slated to be performed on a new, $8.9 million access road that allows the plant to direct unrelated traffic away from the facility.
“A new construction project will have trucks with material and equipment turning off the WIPP access road for the next couple of years, this will allow non WIPP traffic a by-pass,” Khushroo Ghadiali, spokesman for Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor hired to oversee operations at the plant, told AP.
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