New Mexico will hold hearings in the coming weeks about restarting excavation of a new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, the Department of Energy’s manager for the transuranic waste disposal site told state lawmakers in a virtual briefing Tuesday.
Reinhard Knerr, the DOE’s manager of the Carlsbad Field Office that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), mentioned the impending hearing Tuesday morning during an annual briefing for the New Mexico legislature, which this year was held via video conference because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership was also participating in the meeting, which was ongoing at the deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
New Mexico in October refused to renew a 120-day temporary authorization to continue work on the underground shaft, citing COVID-19 infections in southern New Mexico and at WIPP, Knerr said.
The multipurpose shaft would provide an alternate entry to the salt mine and enhance the planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, an airflow project that is being re-baselined after Nuclear Waste Partnership terminated a subcontractor agreement in August.
On a different topic, Knerr said that WIPP will start to receive shipments of transuranic waste from Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas soon.
The waste was rerouted to Texas in 2014 as a result of the February 2014 underground radiation leak at WIPP that effectively closed the mine for about three years. There could be up to 24 shipments from Waste Control Specialists over the coming 12 months, the Carlsbad field office manager said. The waste was potentially ignitable and Texas officials have been pushing DOE to remove it from the commercially operated facility in Andrews.
In addition, Knerr said that WIPP has a planned two-month maintenance outage scheduled to start in about a week.
