The Energy Department is scheduled to begin today a critical review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant that could clear the way for the transuranic waste disposal facility to reopen its doors after more than two years of recovery from a pair of underground accidents.
Sources in New Mexico had pegged Nov. 14 as the date DOE would begin its agency operational readiness review of the deep-underground salt mine known throughout the complex as WIPP. Contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership completed its own operational readiness review Oct. 14 after 11 days: two weeks fewer than the agency budgeted on a WIPP restart schedule released in February.
After DOE completes its review, the New Mexico Environment Department must still authorize WIPP’s reopening. The timing of the state review will depend on what DOE finds during its own evaluation. The agency has scheduled 22 days for its operational readiness review, according to the WIPP restart schedule.
WIPP has been closed since February 2014 after an accidental underground radiation release and an earlier, unrelated underground equipment fire. The department aims to reopen the facility in December.
Also scheduled for this week is a public meeting Wednesday at the Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos, N.M., to discuss next year’s top DOE nuclear cleanup priorities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Legacy nuclear waste cleanup at LANL has since June been governed by a new consent order that requires DOE and it state regulator, the New Mexico Environment Department, to hold periodic public meetings about cleanup priorities for the next year.
Refining remediation priorities annually is a feature of the new consent order that was not present in the 2005 document it replaced. Proponents of the new agreement, including DOE and its state regulator, say the updated process allows them to make a better case for federal funding each year, and to more easily respond to any unexpected technical challenges discovered during cleanup of Cold War-era waste at the site.
Critics of the agreement, chief among them the Nuclear Watch New Mexico citizens group, say the yearly assessments of cleanup priorities give DOE an excuse to delay any given task instead of finding a way to secure more funding for the job from Congress.
