Martin Schneider
Chief Executive Officer
ExchangeMonitor Publications & Forums
3/21/2014
In the wake of the recent incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Secretary of Energy should immediately order a comprehensive, Department-wide review of maintenance needs across the DOE complex, particularly work that has been deferred or underfunded in recent years. While details of the WIPP truck fire and subsequent radiological release are, of course, still being sorted out, it has already been concluded that maintenance lapses contributed to the truck fire. The exact contribution of deferred maintenance to the incidents will likely not be known for several months—but what is already clear is that as shipments to WIPP dramatically increased over the last few years, maintenance funding not only did not increase along with the increased workload, it was actually cut.
As with any aging facility, the cost of maintenance at WIPP—increased workload or not—will increase over time and yet, the amount of funding the Department of Energy has requested for maintenance at WIPP dropped from $16.2 million in FY 2009 to a low of $10.4 million in FY 2013. The requested amount increased slightly in FY 2014 to $12.5 million, but certainly not enough to make up for funding that had been reduced by more than 35 percent over the previous five years.
It’s no secret that DOE’s—and more specifically the White House Office of Management and Budget’s—budget decisions for the cleanup program are driven by compliance. While WIPP and the disposition pathway it provides for transuranic waste is the lynchpin for compliance agreements across the complex, funding to keep WIPP up and running is not mandated by any compliance agreement, and therefore has not been made a priority. And WIPP is not alone. Maintenance at the H-Canyon facility at the Savannah River Site—vital to so many cleanup and national security missions—has likewise been deferred without a specific compliance driver. Looking beyond the cleanup program, perhaps the most glaring example of the impact of deferred maintenance is the July 2012 security breach at the Y-12 site, after which numerous reports have concluded that a lack of maintenance on key security systems was a significant factor in allowing the three elderly peace protesters to gain access to the site.
When budgets are blindly focused on compliance instead of risk, key priorities such as maintenance and facility reliability go out the window to the detriment of what is actually the goal of the program. The goal is not compliance, the goal is cleanup.
There are number of important questions the Department needs to ask as it examines its approach to maintenance in the wake of these incidents. For example, why don’t contracts incentivize maintenance and facility reliability? DOE makes a lot of noise about a safety conscious work environment, but how do you have such an environment with no funding for known maintenance needs? These are just a few of the tough questions DOE should be asking as it moves forward.
With the underfunding of maintenance at sites across the complex in recent years, the incidents at WIPP could be just the tip of iceberg. It’s vital that the Department find these risks and address any potential problems now, proactively, before more facilities are impacted.
