Oak Ridge makes first transuranic waste shipment

Oak Ridge makes first transuranic waste shipment | 17 Aug 2017 | (Oak Ridge, TN) Oak Ridge's Transuranic Waste Processing Center just made its first shipment to a permanent disposal facility in five years. Transuranic waste is a mix of materials and debris contaminated with elements that have a higher atomic mass than uranium: elements like Plutonium -- once produced in Oak Ridge's X-10 graphite reactor, or Americium -- the element that contaminated "the Atomic Man," or Tennessine -- the 117th element named for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's role in its discovery. The waste is headed to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico.