Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
10/30/2015
House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) on Tuesday said his chamber’s appropriators are including $283 million for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the fiscal 2016 spending bill, $35 million more than the Obama administration’s request, but that the 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.”
The transuranic waste disposal site has been closed since a fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release in February 2014. A new report from the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments found that pressures to meet WIPP’s recovery schedule drew workers’ attention away from a focus on safety, among other things. During a speech last month, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said DOE expects WIPP to reopen next year.
"The Department is committed to resuming disposal operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as soon it is able to do so,” a DOE spokesperson said by email yesterday. “DOE remains committed to ensuring the safety of workers and the community. In light of safety-related activities that must be completed before waste emplacement begins, the Department will establish a new target date for the restart of waste emplacement operations in 2016. Progress has been made at WIPP, and we will continue to keep the public informed about our continued recovery activities."
Simpson said, given the growing backlog of TRU waste slated for eventual shipment to WIPP from other DOE sites, that the final fiscal 2016 spending bill could include money for a surface storage facility at the New Mexico site that could hold the waste until it can be moved underground for final storage. The department is seriously studying opportunities to expand WIPP’s above-ground storage capacity, Frank Marcinowski, deputy assistant secretary for waste management in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, said last week during ExchangeMonitor’s Decisionmakers’ Forum on Amelia Island, Fla. “It just seems to make more sense for us to have that capability at the WIPP facility rather than building additional storage capabilities if needed at the generator sites,” he said. “The facility would have a longer life at the WIPP facility, it would be closer to where the waste is ultimately going to be disposed, and will allow us to actually de-inventory the sites in order to bring us closer to meeting compliance requirements as well.”
Simpson Addresses IWTU Startup Delays
In addition to WIPP restart, Simpson also addressed delays opening the Idaho Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), slated to process roughly 900,000 gallons of liquid waste remaining at the Idaho Site. Processing would allow for closure of the site’s remaining waste tanks, and entails a steam reforming process.
The facility most likely will not start operating by the end of October as DOE had hoped, according to Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Hazardous Waste Permitting Manager Robert Bullock. “At this point, it does not look like they will be commencing with that by the end of the month,” Bullock said in an interview this week. “Our main date that we’re holding up as a date of concern is that they initiate treatment of actual waste on or before the date of Sept. 30, 2016.”
Simpson said the challenges DOE has had getting the “relatively small” IWTU up and running “gives me great pause” about the timeline for startup of Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant, which is intended to process millions of gallons of waste and has an approved total project cost of $12.3 billion, according to a May Government Accountability Office report. Simpson said: “This is a big thing, and the idea that you’re going to just build it and fire it up and go, I think, is a challenge for everyone, because I think it’s a very complicated facility that they’re building there, but we’re all hopeful that we can deal with that.”
The Department of Energy and IDEQ earlier this year agreed upon a revised schedule under which DOE intends to cease using the remaining active liquid waste tanks at the Idaho Site by the end of 2018. A notice of noncompliance consent order signed by DOE’s Idaho Operations Office and IDEQ in March details this, as well as a March 24 consent order compliance schedule. The schedule cites the IWTU waste treatment start date as Sept. 30, 2016, at the latest; it dictates that 30 percent of the waste be treated by Sept. 30, 2017, and 70 percent of the waste be treated by June 30, 2018, with the four remaining waste tanks at the facility removed from service by Dec. 31, 2018. The timeline was developed as part of an agreement DOE reached with IDEQ to resolve violations issued against DOE for missing a previous commitment to have the waste tanks emptied by the end of 2014.
"The Department remains committed to meeting its obligations related to the IWTU as described in the … March 3, 2015 Notice of Non-compliance Consent Order, and subsequent March 24, 2015 Consent Order Compliance Schedule,” a DOE spokesperson said by email this week.
