Workers at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina have moved inspection equipment to a storage pad to bypass sending drums to the site's Solid Waste Management Facility for characterization before shipping to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeast New Mexico. "Weighing over 70,000 pounds and at 40 feet long, many departments had to be involved in the safe transport," said the Energy Department's Maxcine Maxted.

Officials at the Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico say the site is in the second phase of resuming normal operations despite the doubling of COVID-19 cases among workers during the past week. "Shipments are regularly adjusted based on crew availability and ongoing work priorities at the site," said WIPP's Bobby St. John.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico last year received fewer shipments of transuranic waste than in the previous year, according to the latest Department of Energy data. In 2019 there were 292 shipments of transuranic waste, down from 311 during 2018.

The Savannah River Site sent five boxes of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Shipments to WIPP resumed in 2017, and "[s]ince shipments have resumed, we have been able to ship 86 cubic-meters of waste to WIPP and continue preparations to ship more," says Savannah River Nuclear Solutions solid waste manager Kerri Crawford.

The Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico won't accept shipments of radioactive waste from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina until its full operation in 2018 or 2019, said Jim Giusti, SRS spokesman for the agency. "It's been a pretty massive effort to upgrade the safety culture, the procedures, everything. There were weaknesses found at WIPP, obviously," he said. The fire in February "caused an unbelievable amount of soot that had to be basically cleaned with a rag and water," he added.