Despite a few hiccups, workers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., are generally adhering well to stricter maintenance procedures and requirements established after the 2014 accidents that have kept the nation’s only transuranic waste-disposal facility closed for more than two years, according to a report the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) published late Friday.
“Overall, the conduct of maintenance program has improved over the last 24 months,” EA said in the report. That is despite “some isolated performance deficiencies” observed during site visits to WIPP from March 14-17 and April 11-14, 2016.
Observed deficiencies included:
- Electricians who failed to use official guidelines written by the manufacturers for servicing light fixtures.
- A circuit breaker for the motor that powers a windup door locked in the “off” position, when it was supposed to be in the “open” position.
- An adjustable lifting fixture workers were directed to use to help them reach some bolts that needed tightening, but which was apparently inadequate to access the work area.
Despite these and other snafus, the EA generally found workers complied with the latest nuclear maintenance management plan that WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership issued April 7, 2016, and which DOE has approved.
In February, DOE estimated it would spend some $245 million on WIPP recovery over four years. That, however, is only the cost for mine repairs, accident investigation, and other activities that would not have been necessary had the accidents never taken place. Over the same four years, the department spent some $1 billion to keep Nuclear Waste Partnership on the job during the recovery — money that otherwise would have paid for normal waste emplacement and operations.
In a Thursday email, a DOE spokesperson for the Carlsbad Field Office that manages WIPP wrote the facility is “on schedule to complete all necessary pre-start activities and resume waste emplacement activities in December 2016, assuming it is safe to do so.”
Nuclear Waste Partnership’s WIPP prime contract was valued at $1.6 billion in 2012 and could run through 2022, if DOE picks up a five-year option that would kick in on Oct. 1, 2017.