The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday.
After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE Carlsbad Field Office to make after the mine reopened. Five of these have been addressed, and 10 now remain. DOE and NWP also closed out 21 pre-start items in time to reopen WIPP on Dec. 20.
The DOE spokesman confirmed there are no deadlines to close out the post-start findings, which include prescriptions to improve training, management, and operations at the deep-underground repository for the radioactively contaminated material known as transuranic waste.
Meanwhile, NWP has so far met its goal of burying two caches of waste each week at WIPP since operations resumed. Each cache contains roughly 3 cubic meters worth of waste: about the volume that would fit in 14 oil drums.
Resumption of waste disposal followed a nearly three-year recovery from a pair of accidents in February 2014: an underground radiation release, and earlier, unrelated underground fire.
With WIPP’s current underground ventilation system, NWP says it can bury no more than five caches of waste per week. Before the 2014 accidents, NWP interred more than 15 shipments weekly. Ramping up to that rate requires an entirely new ventilation system that would come online no sooner than the next decade and cost $270 million to $400 million, the contractor estimates.
