The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Transuranic Waste Repository: A Sleeping Beauty

On May 13, 1998, crowning a 24-year United States Department of Energy effort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certified for safe disposal of long-lived, transuranic radioactive waste proposed by the DOE at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in New Mexico (Figure 1) complied with all applicable environmental radiation protection standards criteria. Withdrawal Act of 1992, of the secretary of energy, the WIPP repository could open 30 calendar days after receiving the EPA certification. The secretary of energy announced May 13, 1998, that he intended to open the WIPP TRUW repository by June 14, 1998. However, at the end of 1998, the opening of the WIPP TRUW repository remains hostage to time-consuming, hazardous-waste-permitting procedures by the state of New Mexico Environment Department and two legal actions. Based on the EPAverified high safety and the demonstrated risk reduction to both current and future generations offered by the WIPP TRUW repository, it i s c o n c l u d e d that the WIPP TRUW repository is a sleeping beauty that will awake, perhaps in stages, and ^^ 1 that the deep geological repository2 and compliance1 Pursuant to the applicable law, the WIPP Land4 as amended in 1997,5 at the decisionofthe Vnited States, ]0 large, begin its important mission in 1999.