The Energy Department and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant notified the New Mexico Environment Department last week that they plan to start major upgrades to the site’s ventilation system by next December.
The notification was part of a recently published letter to John Kieling, chief of the New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau, from DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader and Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) President and Project Manager Bruce Covert.
The new shaft, known as shaft number five, is part of a construction plan aimed at increasing WIPP’s underground airflow so DOE and NWP can excavate more disposal space and perform mine maintenance without halting disposal of transuranic waste at the site.
“The Permittees anticipate that the excavation of S#5 [shaft number five] will start in calendar year 2018,” Shrader and Covert wrote in their letter, which was dated Thursday, July 13. Although DOE’s plans have been more or less official since the Trump administration unveiled its budget request in May, last week’s letter shows the agency is wasting little time getting the regulatory wheels moving on the long-anticipated project.
WIPP’s ventilation rate plummeted to 60,000 cubic feet per minute after an accidental underground radiation release and unrelated underground fire in 2014. Even after fixes put in place to support the mine’s late-December reopening, WIPP has only enough underground airflow for workers to safely conduct either waste disposal or mine maintenance.
The new construction DOE wants to begin next year would be the first step toward bringing underground ventilation up to 540,000 cubic feet per minute.
The House Appropriations Committee last week approved a fiscal 2018 budget of about $323 million for WIPP, which matches the White House’s request. That includes $65 million to design and build the new ventilation system and exhaust shaft. The Senate essentially matched that with around $320 million for 2018, in a spending bill that cleared the chamber’s Appropriations Committee Thursday.
