The Department of Energy on Tuesday said it approved changes to an official safety document that lays the groundwork for contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., and resume nuclear waste disposal in the underground facility after two years spent recovering from a radiation release and equipment fire.
While the approved changes to the so-called Documented Safety Analysis prepared by NWP mark a major paperwork milestone, they are no guarantee WIPP will reopen in mid-December, as DOE plans; the agency thought the document would be approved in February, according to the WIPP reopening schedule the agency published that month. NWP delivered the Documented Safety Analysis to DOE officials in Carlsbad in December.
Notwithstanding the delay, the department says WIPP will reopen by year’s end.
“Completion of this key milestone keeps us on track to resuming operations by the end of this year,” Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a Tuesday press release announcing the document’s approval.
Reached by email Wednesday, an NWP spokesperson declined to discuss the apparent two-month delay.
“As Todd Shrader’s quote in yesterday’s WIPP update indicated, approval of the new DSA is a significant milestone that keeps us on track for resumption of waste emplacement operations by the end of 2016,” the spokesperson wrote.
The Documented Safety Analysis details NWP’s plans for coping with a variety of accident and disaster scenarios at WIPP, the country’s only permanent disposal facility for the radio-contaminated material known as transuranic waste. WIPP closed in February 2014 after an accidental radiation release blamed on an improperly sealed container, and an unrelated, earlier underground fire.
NWP personnel now will spend months drilling the safety procedures in the just-approved document, along with conducting dress rehearsals of waste disposal with empty canisters. Prior to receiving DOE authorization to resume waste operations, the site will undergo a number of readiness reviews by subject matter experts, DOE contractors, and department personnel.
Meanwhile, DOE and NWP marked another milestone this week, reporting Tuesday to the New Mexico Environment Department that WIPP’s ventilation system — operating at far lower levels than before the 2014 accidents that shuttered the facility — has been modified so that it can keep air clean enough for workers to resume waste storage, once DOE deems it safe to do that.
In an official letter to Santa Fe dated May 2, NWP and the Carlsbad Field Office said they finished installing two large fans and associated equipment known officially as the interim ventilation system — a modification that will increase underground air circulation at WIPP to just over 110,000 cubic feet per minute from the current 60,000 cubic feet per minute.
In the letter to John Kieling, head of the state Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau, Shrader and NWP President and Project Manager Philip Breidenbach said they had obtained “a New Mexico registered Professional Engineer certification that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility has been modified in compliance with the Hazardous Waste Facility Permit.”
The interim ventilation system is one of two stopgap upgrades planned so DOE can safely store waste and mine out more space at WIPP, once it reopens. The second upgrade, known as the supplemental ventilation system, “will not be put into operation until sometime in 2017,” the NWP spokesperson said, adding “progress on the interim ventilation system remains on schedule.”
The supplemental ventilation system will free the agency to expand the mine, and to perform the routine maintenance that requires diesel-powered equipment.
Even with both upgrades, DOE will only be able to do one thing at a time underground: waste emplacement or mining. A permanent ventilation system that would allow both of those things to happen at once will cost $270 million to $400 million, and not be ready until 2021 at the earliest, a DOE official said during an industry conference in March.
