The Department of Energy intends to more than double funding in fiscal 2018 for work on the new permanent ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, according to the detailed budget justification released this week for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
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 in a February 2014 incident was not released into the environment. After a nearly three-year recovery operation, WIPP reopened last December and in April began accepting waste shipments from other DOE locations.
While temporary systems were installed after the radiation incident to increase airflow, the permanent system will be needed to increase that to sufficient levels – planned up to 540,000 cubic feet per minute – to allow WIPP to simultaneously carry out waste emplacement and underground maintenance and mining operations.
That capacity would be key to sustaining a steady stream of waste shipments from the DOE complex. The department has aimed for two shipments per week since reopening, and will support up to four shipments weekly in fiscal 2018, the budget justification says. But waste emplacement will remain limited until permanent ventilation is installed, DOE EM said.
The Trump administration’s budget would provide $65.6 million for WIPP construction for the budget year beginning Oct. 1: $46 million for the safety-significant confinement ventilation system and $19.6 million for a new exhaust shaft. That compares to roughly $30.5 million in total in both the enacted fiscal 2016 budget and fiscal 2017 continuing resolution that was still in place as the new spending proposal was being developed, according to the DOE EM budget plan.
Preliminary work on the permanent ventilation system began in July 2016. The department expects to reach Critical Decision 2 and 3 in the second quarter of 2018, allowing for the start of construction on the ventilation system and exhaust shaft.
Further information on the state of the project was not immediately available: WIPP management contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership did not respond to requests for comment; DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office referred questions to department headquarters, which did not respond to questions regarding the budget plan for WIPP or other cleanup sites.
In total, WIPP would receive about $323 million in fiscal 2018 if Congress accepts DOE’s spending proposal. With recovery efforts at WIPP complete, that line item would be zeroed out and site operations funding would spike by $93.1 million from fiscal 2016, to $272.2 million. That would cover sustaining recovery enhancements, ongoing waste emplacement operations, and development of above-ground storage capacity.
Still, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said in May he would seek additional funding for the site.
The Office of Environmental Management as a whole would receive $6.5 billion for cleanup of its nuclear weapons complex, a 1 percent tick up from its funding in the fiscal 2017 omnibus appropriations bill signed in May.
The DOE EM budget justification was released about three weeks after corresponding documents for other agency branches following the administration’s May 23 budget proposal rollout.
Elsewhere in the EM complex:
The Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee would receive $390.2million in environmental management funds, down from $239.1 million in the enacted fiscal 2016 budget. Funding for cleanup and disposition and nuclear facility decontamination and decommissioning would dip by more than $42 million, offset in part by a $12.7 million spike in funding for construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility and On-Site Disposal Facility.
Environmental Management expects in the upcoming budget year to complete design and start early site preparation for the Mercury Treatment Facility at the Y-12 nuclear complex, which will remove mercury left by former lithium processing at the Y-12 National Security Complex from the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico would receive $191.6 million for defense environmental cleanup, rising from $185 million on the enacted fiscal 2016 budget. The budget proposal commits DOE to two major milestones by September 2018 at the nuclear weapons laboratory: Completion of processing of remediated nitrate salts, the waste stream linked to the WIPP radiation release; and “Complete successful transition of the new contractual acquisition strategy for the environmental clean-up workscope.”
The Office of Environmental Management assumed oversight of cleanup at Los Alamos from DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration after the waste container that burst open at WIPP was found to have originated at the laboratory. Management of cleanup of legacy waste at LANL will also transition to a new contractor upon the Sept. 30 expiration of a bridge contract issued to site management and operations contractor Los Alamos National Security.
Cleanup funding at the Idaho National Laboratory would fall by $42.7 million, from $401.9 million in the enacted fiscal 2016 budget to $359.2 million in the next budget. That includes $15.1 million cut from the budget for radioactive liquid waste stabilization and disposition due to delays in closing four storage tanks filled with high-level waste.
That waste is intended to be processed at the laboratory’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, which was largely completed in 2012 but has not yet functioned correctly in testing.
A $32.2 million funding reduction for solid waste stabilization and disposition reflects better news for the Idaho National Laboratory, the budget says: “The funding decrease reflects progress in treatment and completion of retrieval in the transuranic waste storage area. Retrieval has been completed in the Transuranic Storage Area, major upgrades have been completed in the treatment facility allowing for enhanced operations.”
Meanwhile, DOE would provide nearly $8 million in additional funding for spent nuclear fuel stabilization and disposition at INL, for a total just shy of $29 million.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is scheduled to discuss his agency’s fiscal 20128 budget request before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee next Thursday.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article did not include the full fiscal 2018 Environmental Management funding request for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., site. The article has been updated.
