The U.S. Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is optimistic the state will green light its plans for a new utility shaft that is opposed by two local advocacy groups.
“The project remains on course as we prepare for the construction process,” Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesman Bobby St. John said in a Nov. 26 email.
The contractor and DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Aug. 15 together requested a formal permit modification for the project with the New Mexico Environment Department, St. John said. On Aug. 21, WIPP management announced a $75 million award for a subcontractor, Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers Joint Venture, to build a new underground utility shaft.
The multipurpose shaft would enhance the estimated $500 million ventilation upgrade project at the WIPP. It would also provide a second access point into the underground for people and equipment, according to DOE and its contractor.
But Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) question why WIPP needs the new utility shaft.
The New Mexico Environment Department should not feel obligated to approve the shaft, which would be 2,150 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter, merely because a contract award has been announced, Santa Fe-based Nuclear Watch New Mexico said in its Oct. 16 comments on the permit modification.
“Originally billed as a replacement exhaust shaft to help WIPP recover from the 2014 exploding drum event that shut down WIPP for three years,” the new shaft is now designed to increase the waste-disposal mission of the site beyond 175,500 cubic meters of defense-related transuranic waste, the group said.
Likewise, Albuquerque -based Southwest Research and Information Center in its Oct. 16 comments said DOE is hoping to ship additional waste, such as downblended plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, to WIPP. Both Southwest Research and Nuclear Watch New Mexico are suing DOE over a revised formula for counting the volume of waste underground at WIPP.
In addition, SRIC said the ongoing Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System project at WIPP will, once completed allow concurrent salt mining, maintenance, and waste emplacement underground – without the addition of the new shaft.
