SUMMERLIN, Nev. — Plans for a new permanent ventilation system at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico should not be held back by a continuing resolution that will keep the federal government running into December, DOE’s top official at the site said Wednesday.
Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader shared his prediction during a presentation at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit in answer to a question on the impact of a CR on the capital project due to start construction in fiscal 2018.
“The good thing about our capital projects are that they were started last year,” Shrader said. “We won’t have to worry about a new start restriction under a CR.”
Of course, DOE Carlsbad won’t know for sure “until we see the numbers,” he added ahead of the rollout of the continuing resolution.
The House of Representatives on Friday approved the Senate-backed pending measure that funds the government through Dec. 8, with appropriations for the Energy Department and other federal agencies set at fiscal 2017 levels during that period. There was no language in the bill that would indicate any funding exceptions for WIPP.
For the budget year beginning Oct. 1, DOE requested more than $65 million for ventilation-related construction at WIPP: $46 million for the safety-significant confinement ventilation system and $19.6 million for a new exhaust shaft. The total amount would more than double the roughly $32.5 million appropriated for 2017 in a spending bill signed in May. The gap between the 2018 request and 2017 appropriation for the safety-significant confinement and ventilation system is especially large. The 2017 spending bill provided just $2.5 million: roughly 5 percent of what DOE thought it would need for the project in 2018.
Airflow at the transuranic waste storage mine was reduced drastically to 60,000 cubic feet per minute as part of an effort to ensure that radiation released underground in a February 2014 incident did not escape into the environment. While interim and supplemental systems have been installed to increase ventilation, WIPP will need a new permanent system – providing airflow of up to 540,000 cubic feet per minute — to simultaneously carry out waste emplacement and underground maintenance and mining operations.
After a nearly three-year recovery operation, WIPP reopened last December and in April began accepting waste shipments from other DOE locations. After a slow start, shipments are now up to three to four per week.
“A couple of times we have gotten five. A couple of times we have gotten zero,” Shrader said.
As of last week, the facility had received 53 shipments since reopening: 33 from the Idaho National Laboratory, nine from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, nine from the privately operated Waste Control Specialists storage site in Texas, and two from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. No additional shipments from Savannah River are expected for the time being, while shipments from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico should begin in the fall, followed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and later the Hanford Site in Washington state, Shrader said.
The Energy Department hopes to get to 17 shipments per week in fiscal 2022, but increasing the waste emplacement rate will require process improvements, possibly additional work shifts, and opening the new Panel 8 storage space, according to Shrader.
The yearly target is for 165 shipments in fiscal 2018. The transport projections rise and dip over coming years, but forecast 736 shipments in fiscal 2023.
Spending Bill Contains Standard Leeway for DOE Uranium Enrichment Cleanup
The Energy Department would receive a certain amount of leeway to sustain certain nuclear cleanup projects under the continguing resolution.
Money from the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund “may be apportioned up to the rate for operations necessary to avoid disruption of continuing projects or activities funded in this appropriation,” according to the bill, using the same language employed in previous spending bills.
The decontamination and decommissioning funding is essentially the only DOE environmental management program singled out in the CR. This particular fund supports cleanup of former uranium enrichment operations at DOE’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, Paducah Site in Kentucky, and Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
The secretary of energy is instructed to inform the House and the Senate within three days after each use of the spending authority outlined in the CR language.
The enacted level of uranium enrichment decontamination and decommissioning funding for the fiscal 2017 was $768 million. The Trump administration requested $752.7 million for fiscal 2018. House appropriators recommended $768 million for the next budget, while their Senate counterparts proposed to increase spending to $788 million.
Portsmouth, where most of DOE’s uranium cleanup is focused at the moment, took the lion’s share of the fund in 2017 with about $315 million: about 11 percent less than the Trump administration requested for 2018.
