A new $288 million ventilation system, intended to allow the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to conduct simultaneous underground salt mining and disposal of transuranic waste, has been approved by Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White.
“This will be a significant improvement for WIPP in support of its critical role in our national mission,” White said in a Monday press release from the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
The new ventilation system should increase underground airflow to about 540,000 cubic feet per minute, more than three times the current rate. After a February 2014 underground radiation release, officials at WIPP dramatically cut airflow levels to prevent the spread of contaminants.
The new permanent system will feature several buildings on the surface to filter the air and increase airflow to underground working areas. The surface structures will be connected to a new underground shaft listed by DOE officials as a separate infrastructure project.
Nuclear Waste Partnership, DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP, can now issue a contract for construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System. The contract award is expected this summer, quickly followed by the start of construction, NWP spokesman Donavan Mager said by email. Site grading and land clearing could begin on the surface this spring, however, he added.
Nuclear Waste Partnership has already received the needed permit modification for from the New Mexico Environmental Department to commence construction, Mager said.
The project includes design and construction of a new 55,000 square-foot filter building, a salt reduction building, fabrication facility, storm water equipment, and overhead electric transmission lines, Mager said. The total costs also include eventual demolition of existing filter facilities.
The contractor is reviewing three bids for surface construction of the ventilation project, and it will enter into the contract with the successful bidder and manage the subcontract, NWP has said.
In an infrastructure project classified separately from the ventilation infrastructure, NWP will build a new underground shaft to connect the underground disposal areas to the new surface facilities. Construction of the ventilation shaft and drifts should begin in 2020, Mager said.
The House Appropriation Committee passed legislation this week that would provide $84 million for the new ventilation system for fiscal 2019, which begins on Oct. 1. That is slightly less than the $86 million budgeted in the current 2018 fiscal year. The Energy Department is expected to request funding for the project through fiscal 2022, Mager said.
WIPP received 106 shipments of transuranic waste between Jan. 1 and May 2 of this year, which is the most recent date for which data is publicly available. The facility in January resumed limited salt mining in storage Panel 8. Waste emplacement would start in Panel 8 after Panel 7 is filled, which will probably occur in 2020, DOE has said.
