The Energy Department office that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., is in the market for a satellite location about four hours north in the city of Albuquerque.
“Due to the low availability of housing and high cost of living in Carlsbad, New Mexico, multiple offices in the Carlsbad Field Office are short staffed,” according to a notice posted on the DOE WIPP website. Housing and office space demand around Carlsbad dramatically increased during the past couple years due to an oil and gas boom. To compensate, one WIPP subcontractor firm even purchased an old Carlsbad-area hotel to house its workforce.
Economists sometimes say people are reluctant to accept jobs in areas where housing is unaffordable. Short staffing has the potential to hinder smooth operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and its transuranic waste disposal mission, according to the notice.
The Carlsbad Field Office is looking to rent space, which includes a conference room and could accommodate 10 people or more, from the Government Services Administration in Albuquerque.
An Albuquerque location could be especially useful to new and current employees of the Carlsbad-based National Transuranic Waste Program, charged with visiting generator sites across the country and evaluating waste packaging and shipment processes, said one Carlsbad source. Because these staffers spend so much of their time traveling, it could be valuable for them to live near a large airport. Such employees might only spend a few days per month at Carlsbad, he added, saying the other airport option is El Paso, Texas, roughly three hours away by car.
Some sources have also said privately that the remote nature of the Carlsbad location can be a tough sell to spouses of individuals offered WIPP-based employment.
WIPP’s First-Quarter Shipments Drop Nearly One-Third From 2019
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant emplaced 40 shipments of transuranic waste during the first three months of 2020, according to data from its public website.
That is down significantly from 59 shipments in the first three months of 2019.
The disposal site completed a three-week maintenance outage on March 16. Eleven days later, the facility started reducing operations to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus 2019; by March 31 work was limited to essential operations, such as roof bolting in the underground salt mine, and measures to protect health and safety. The disposal site is still accepting perhaps five shipments per week, roughly half as much as it might generally receive on a good week.
In addition, a DOE spokesperson said this week by email that poor weather during January also slowed the rate of shipments.
During the first quarter, WIPP received 24 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory, eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and eight from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Fluor Idaho is still packaging waste and making shipments to WIPP as part of its essential operations, according to a regular monthly staff report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is operated for DOE by Nuclear Waste Partnership, a joint venture comprised of Amentum, BWX Technologies, and major subcontractor Orano.
