The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s planned revival of an underground ventilation fan that has been idle for years is targeted for late July, officials for the Department of Energy and its prime contractor in Carlsbad, N.M. said Thursday night.
The summer target timeframe was shared by Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) operations manager Don McBridge for Nuclear Waste Partnership during a Zoom town hall presentation on the planned restart of the 700-C ventilation fan.
Operation of the fan, which is anticipated to last at least two years, poses scant radiological risks, according to managers of the transuranic waste disposal site, WIPP managers said.
While WIPP management does not need approval of regulators Environmental Protection Agency and the New Mexico Environment Department, those agencies have been kept in the loop and not raised any objections, Ed Garza, assistant manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said during the online briefing.
Data gleaned from a four-hour test of WIPP’s 700-C ventilation fan on Jan. 31 showed the radiological material emitted was “almost undetectable” the DOE and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership said in an April 9 press release.
“The data indicates that the emission was less than predicted, and more than 5,000 times below the Environmental Protection Agency limit of 10 millirem/year,” according to DOE. The agency said the dose is no more than the annual dose someone might receive from owning a smoke detector.
The DOE and its prime contractor discussed the data during the virtual town hall meeting Thursday.. Stakeholders can also submit questions prior to the meeting by emailing the WIPP Information Center at [email protected].
The DOE is planning to bring the fan, not used since 2014, back into service this summer to provide short-term improvement to underground ventilation at the salt mine used for permanent disposal of defense-related transuranic waste.
A permanent ventilation upgrade, in the form of a Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, is at least a couple of years away. That permanent system is meant to increase underground airflow to 540,000 cubic feet per minute, enough to allow simultaneous salt mining and waste emplacement. Nuclear Waste Partnership terminated the contract of the subcontractor in charge of the ventilation upgrade project last summer and had not awarded a replacement contract at deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor..
During a virtual town hall presentation in December, WIPP managers said restarting the fan should allow an unfiltered underground airflow capacity of up to 240,000 cubic feet per minute: roughly, a 94,000 cubic-feet-per-minute increase over existing systems.
Separately DOE announced in a Thursday press release it has finished a supplement analysis for the construction of two replacement disposal panels in the underground. The study shows the existing environmental impact statement for the expansion remains adequate. Like the existing panels, each of the new ones will have seven disposal rooms measuring approximately 300 feet long, by 33 feet wide and 13 feet high from floor to ceiling, the DOE said.
