AUGUSTA - Officials said Thursday that it is still premature to discuss when Savannah River Site and other Department of Energy sites can resume shipments of transuranic waste to a plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board - a board that includes the SRS Citizens Advisory Board and seven other advisory boards in the complex - covered the issue during a Day 2 of a board leaders' meeting.
Operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, are on hold after 22 workers were exposed to radiation during an incident in February 20.
The projected reopening of the site is scheduled for next year, with no set timetable for when sites can continue sending their shipments of transuranic waste - solid waste consisting of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other items contaminated with plutonium.
Frank Marcinowski, deputy assistant secretary for waste management, said determining the rate of shipments among various sites will be based on transportation and waste acceptance capabilities, storage capacities and other site-specific safety issues.
When asked about actions taken against workers and the contractor responsible for the exposure, Marcinowski said there were management changes involved and reiterated that the workers should have caught the mishaps.
"It came down to human error, and we need to make sure we eliminate as much of that as possible," Marcinowski said. "We can't have another such incident like this and just hope that things are going to recover. So we know we have to do and we're taking numerous steps to build confidence in what we're doing."
Nina Spinelli, a member of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, said the WIPP incident was preventable but that it's important for DOE to embrace the lessons learned.
"In the future, there's need to be more research on these issues to prevent a similar incident," Spinelli said.
In 2001, SRS began shipping more than 15,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste to the WIPP. The last shipment SRS sent to occurred in February, and the site currently has about 750 cubic meters left. Officials have sent reported that shipments are safely stored on site ready to go once WIPP reopens.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013.
He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.