New Mexico state regulators have completed a critical review of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, but have yet to disclose the results.
“Once our inspectors have compiled their observations, we will formally notify WIPP of the results of the inspections,” New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary Butch tongate said in a press release Wednesday.
The state review is a major step in enabling the deep-underground salt mine to receive new shipments from across the DOE complex of the radioactively contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste.
NMED officials conducted the WIPP inspection during the week of Dec. 5, about a week before the press release hit the wire. The state agency issued the operating permit the Energy Department and WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership require to run transuranic waste-disposal facility, which has been been shuttered since 2014 after an accidental underground radiation release and earlier, unrelated underground fire.
NMED could disclose the results of its review at a WIPP town hall slated to be webcast from Carlsbad, N.M. at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time today. DOE is expected to discuss the results of its own operational readiness review at that meeting, and whether it discovered any problems that might keep the mine from reopening by Dec. 31.
In February, DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership thought they could have WIPP open again by Dec. 12. However, sources in New Mexico remain optimistic the mine might again get the all-clear from DOE and Santa Fe before New Year’s.
Unlike DOE, which was reviewing whether its contractor was ready to resume waste disposal operations in accordance with voluminous new safety procedures designed to prevent more underground accidents, NMED was checking to see whether DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership have complied with both federal environmental regulations and a specific series of fixes the state issued after the 2014 accidents. One of these was a directive to seal off the room containing a drum of nuclear waste that burst open in 2014.
