Nuclear Waste Partnership, prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, has completed the penultimate review standing in the way of reopening the nation’s only permanent disposal facility for transuranic waste in December.
The end of the so-called contractor operational readiness review, which began Oct. 3, clears the way for a final DOE-led review of WIPP to begin in a matter of weeks, John Heaton, chairman of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
DOE is tentatively slated to begin its agency operational readiness review on Nov. 14, two people familiar with the agency’s thinking said Tuesday. Operational readiness reviews are detailed assessments of whether a contractor is prepared to start — or in this case, continue — a job for DOE.
The agency could finish its review just after the Nov. 24 Thanksgiving holiday, these people said, keeping alive the possibility that WIPP could be authorized to resume underground transuranic waste disposal by the following month. That would put the agency on track to resume shipping waste to the deep-underground salt mine from across the department’s nuclear complex by April, according to timelines DOE and NWP shared this summer,
Earlier this year, DOE pushed WIPP’s reopening to December 2016 from March 2016. This summer, after burning up all the margin in their new reopening scheduled, the agency and its contractor hinted the December reopening was in jeopardy.
Even after the DOE-led review, WIPP cannot reopen until its primary regulator, the New Mexico Environment Department, gives the nod. In an emailed statement Tuesday, New Mexico Environment Secretary Butch Tongate would not comment on DOE’s timeline, but wrote that “WIPP will only reopen after the U.S. Department of Energy has completed its operational readiness review, and the New Mexico Environment Department has subsequently conducted a comprehensive inspection to ensure the facility is safe to resume operations.”
“We’re continuing to work with WIPP and DOE leadership to protect the safety of workers, communities in the area, and the surrounding environment,” Tongate wrote.
NWP is led by AECOM and BWX Technologies. The five-year base period on the company’s WIPP management and operations contract expires Sept. 30, 2017, and is worth about $1 billion. DOE holds a one-year option and a four-year option on the pact.
Transuranic waste is a DOE term for equipment and material contaminated by elements heavier than uranium. Cold War nuclear weapons development created vast amounts of transuranic waste, much of which remains at DOE cleanup sites overseen by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.
