The environmental regulator in New Mexico should decide by this fall whether to allow the Department of Energy and its contractor to resume digging a new underground shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant this fall, a state official told the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee this week.
The final decision by the New Mexico Environment Department secretary should be issued this fall, said Christopher Catechis, the state agency’s acting Resource Protection Division director, in his presentation on Wednesday to the panel. A technical review of the new shaft is underway following a hearing in May.
The DOE wants to modify the existing hazardous waste permit to add language allowing a new air intake shaft about 2,100 feet deep at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Environmental advocates say the shaft, dubbed Shaft No. 5, is unnecessary for the increased airflow given the ongoing construction of the Safety Significant Confined Ventilation System.
Last November, the state balked at renewing a temporary work authorization after the shaft’s first 200 feet were excavated, partly because of the prevalence of COVID-19 cases at WIPP at that time.
The current 10-year state permit for WIPP, which technically expired in December, is still valid and enforceable, Catechis said. A technical review of a new permit is underway.
The public should be fully heard on issues like the shaft, proposed new underground waste panels and whether the WIPP permit should be extended far beyond the 2024 retirement date originally envisioned in the permit, Don Hancock of the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center in his presentation to the legislature.
The people in New Mexico did not sign up for “forever WIPP,” Hancock said.
Meanwhile, a DOE official said, disposing of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory continues to be a high priority for WIPP, despite a shortfall so far compared with the agency’s goals for 2022.
The federal agency had projected 80 shipments to WIPP from Los Alamos during 2021, but as of July 5 there have only been 23, Reinhard Knerr, the manager of DOE Carlsbad Field Office said in a slide presentation to the panel.
Shipments to the underground disposal facility from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) operations at Los Alamos only resumed earlier this month after a Feb. 26 incident where Technical Area-55 Plutonium Facility-4 was evacuated when sparks flew from a drum that being packed for shipment to WIPP.
Los Alamos is scheduled for two shipments per week to WIPP and there is a backlog of nine-to-12 weeks’ worth of waste at the lab already certified for shipment to the salt mine, Knerr said in his presentation.
Both the NNSA and the DOE Office of Environmental Management are sending waste to WIPP using the same Radioassay and Nondestructive Testing facility at Los Alamos, Knerr said. It is a collaborative project that began last fall, DOE has said.
Los Alamos remains a key shipper to WIPP along with the Idaho National Laboratory, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
This week, WIPP was to receive 10 shipments, including six from Idaho, Knerr said in the presentation, adding that the goal is for the facility to gradually increase from 10 shipments to 17 shipments per week in 2023, which would be similar to pre-2014 levels. In February 2014 a drum that came to WIPP from Los Alamos leaked radiation into the underground, forcing the facility out of service for about three years.
