Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
11/6/2015
The Energy Department expects to approve a new performance measurement baseline (PMB) for restarting operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant by the end of this year. The document could be released on the late end of that timeline as all levels of DOE leadership would have to vet it by the end the next two holiday-stacked months, a department spokesperson said in a brief interview on Wednesday. The official declined to say when the PMB, which notably would include specific schedule and cost information for reopening the transuranic storage waste site, is expected to be made public, noting an internal review process that involves passing the document back and forth between DOE and WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership before final approval.
“I would say we expect to have one by the end of the year, but it could be that late,” the spokesperson said. “With the holidays, they take a pretty big bite out of November and December. So we’d like to be optimistic, but realistic.” The previous PMB, which projected a $242 million recovery project that would end by March 2016, was scrapped in the face of concerns over faulty equipment and safety-related activities, among other issues.
The New Mexico facility has not taken new shipments of TRU waste from DOE sites since a fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release in February 2014. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz last month said DOE’s target is for WIPP to restart operations by the end of 2016, but the department “won’t really know for sure” whether that will happen until the final PMB is approved, the spokesperson said. “Our objective is to develop a realistic goal based on a well-developed PMB that has a high confidence level.” The cost and schedule information will be delivered at an 80 percent “confidence level,” the spokesperson said, meaning there is an 80 percent probability that the WIPP restart of operations will occur on or before the indicated date.
John Heaton, chairman of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, praised DOE managers and NWP for being “very up front” about schedule progress and risks. “We were given a complete review of the schedule early in the year where risks were explained to meeting certain deadlines,” Heaton said by email. “As we understand it, the new PMB will have more risk considerations in it, and a very businesslike process for analyzing reasons for slippage.” He said too little funding for WIPP would be a “major risk” for hitting PMB milestones.
House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) last week said his chamber’s appropriators are including $283 million for WIPP in the fiscal 2016 spending bill, $35 million more than the Obama administration’s request, but added that funding might not be enough to keep WIPP on track to reopen by the end of next year. “I think we’re probably going to end up needing more than that to get WIPP open, but [WIPP’s reopening is] going to be delayed a little while that happens,” Simpson said during a speech at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “But the reality is that since WIPP was opened, we haven’t done the maintenance at WIPP that should’ve been done, and so consequently, we’re going in, we’re doing all that now, and refurbishing it, and we need to do it the right way.”
Heaton also pointed out that the “imposition” of certain safety criteria into WIPP’s documented safety analysis (DSA) in March was thought to create a four-month delay in its completion. “That, indeed, has proven to be the fact, and therefore, it has become the long pole in the tent,” he said. DOE now expects to complete the DSA by January, Frank Marcinowski, acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, said during a speech in September.
Though Heaton cited the DSA delays, he also noted visible headway in WIPP recovery. He said: “The Task Force is very excited about the progress that has been made, and believe we have clearly turned the corner and moving in a very positive direction.”
