Truckloads of radioactive waste will be rolling away from the Hanford nuclear reservation again starting in March.

No transuranic waste has been shipped from Hanford to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico, the nation's repository for transuranic waste, since September 2008.

Transuranic waste at Hanford typically is debris such as laboratory equipment, protective clothing or tools contaminated with plutonium from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.

The Department of Energy had not planned to resume shipments to New Mexico from Hanford until 2014, but federal economic stimulus money has accelerated its plans.

Earlier, Hanford's annual budget money was shifted from work in central Hanford, where transuranic waste is stored, to clean up the area closest to the Columbia River.

"This is an opportunity to work with WIPP to get rid of additional waste," said Geoff Tyree, DOE spokesman.

Hanford will spend $30 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money to speed up work to prepare the waste for shipments. Additional economic stimulus money is making more trucks and staff available for the project through the DOE Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico.

DOE plans to start with two shipments to WIPP a week and then build to five a week by late spring and summer. In the fall it could be sending seven truckloads a week to New Mexico.

In 2008 when shipments were suspended, about two truckloads a week were being sent to WIPP. Shipments to date total 432 out of an estimated 1,200 that may be required for Hanford's stored transuranic waste.

The waste is shipped in three 10-foot-tall cylindrical containers placed upright on a truck trailer. An average load would hold about 12 cubic yards of waste.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. has hired 60 new employees to bring its staff preparing the transuranic waste for shipment to more than 200, most of them union workers, Tyree said.

Their work includes repackaging waste for shipment and loading the waste.

Under a new DOE policy, Washington TRU Solutions, a contractor under the DOE Carlsbad Field Office, is certifying the waste rather than Hanford employees. As many as 25 of those employees will be at Hanford over time to certify the waste.

Drums of waste -- some of which were temporarily buried at Hanford until WIPP opened -- have to be X-rayed to make sure they don't contain items WIPP will not accept, such as liquids.

An additional shift to package the waste will be added Monday, and four packaging lines will be added at T Plant and a packaging line restarted at the Waste Receiving and Processing Facility.