Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration will participate virtually in a Thursday meeting aimed at helping small businesses do business at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
The meeting, hosted in Albuquerque, N.M., by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Supply Chain Management Center, will be webcast live, according to a Friday press release from the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office.
The meeting will be webcast from the Albuquerque Convention Center’s 115 Brazos Room. Remote participants can log on at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/c-h2. The password is Supply21816.
Scheduled speakers include:
- Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
- Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), whose congressional district includes WIPP.
- Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.).
- NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz.
- NNSA Supply Chain Management Center Director Scott Bissen.
WIPP, a subterranean facility located in a hollowed-out salt cavern some 25 miles outside Carlsbad, is the only U.S. repository for transuranic waste: material and equipment contaminated by plutonium refining.
The facility has been closed to new waste shipments since an underground fire and unrelated radiation release in 2014. DOE plans to reopen WIPP in mid-December of this year. One of the small business angles in the fiscal 2017 budget the White House rolled out Feb. 9 is DOE’s plan to centralize waste transportation services to WIPP under a new waste-hauling contract expected to be put out to bid in 2016.
