The New Mexico Environment Department on Monday approved the Energy Department’s request to ease airflow restrictions in the deep-underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: a move the agency says will help ensure smoother waste disposal operations at the mine, once it reopens.
The modification is effective Oct. 19, according to a letter Monday from Kathryn Roberts, director of the New Mexico Environment Department’s Resource Protection Division, to Todd Shrader, the head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, and Philip Breidenbach, president and project manager for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership. The state posted the letter online.
The new permit modification conditionally allows DOE workers to continue interring transuranic waste in the mine, even in areas where airflow has dropped below 35,000 standard cubic feet per minute (SCFM). Previously, DOE had to halt work in areas where airflow fell below that threshold.
The extra leniency is conditional on DOE informing the state of its plans to continue working in low-airflow areas, after such conditions are discovered, according to the permit modification. In its request, DOE proposed giving workers respirators to filter out volatile organic compounds in mine rooms where airflow is not at least 35,000 cubic feet per minute.
DOE requested the permit modification in June, and the state gave its approval after a mandatory 60-day comment period that concluded Aug. 8.
Volatile organic compounds are a byproduct of the diesel-burning mine equipment used to perform maintenance at WIPP, where naturally shifting salt ceilings and walls must be periodically reinforced. WIPP has been closed since 2014 because of an accidental underground radiation release and an earlier, unrelated, underground fire. The mine is slated to reopen late this year or in early 2017.
