PHOENIX — The top manager for the Bechtel affiliate now in charge of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico expects a new underground ventilation system to be operating by late 2025 or early 2026.
Ken Harrawood, president and program manager of Salado Isolation Mining, which took over as prime contract at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), offered the assessment to Exchange Monitor at the conclusion of a Waste Management Symposia panel discussion on WIPP regulation.
Earlier in the day William (Ike) White, DOE Office of Environmental Management senior adviser, said the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System commissioning process will start by the end of the year.
The system’s official CD-4 date, the DOE project management milestone that marks the end of construction and the beginning of operations, is June 2026. The project will cost about $500 million, Ralph Musick, WIPP’s capital asset manager, said in a presentation here Thursday.
That will involve start of commissioning of two major surface facilities for the new ventilation system, Harrawood said. Commissioning of these facilities, the Salt Reduction Building and the New Filter Building, should begin by the end of 2023, he added. The 25,000-square-foot Salt Reduction Building uses misters and other equipment to remove airborne salt before the air enters the New Filter Building, according to DOE.
Once it comes online, the new ventilation system will triple WIPP’s underground airflow to roughly 540,000 cubic feet per minute, according to DOE.
Currently, the ventilation system is “like the air is being blown through a straw,” said Kevin Stricklin, a former coal mine safety administrator for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. With the new system the straw will be more like a “tunnel,” said Stricklin during the session. The former mining official now works with Unwin, a risk management company.
In an aside, Striklin said WIPP is one of only 16 operating salt mines in the United States and probably the only one that does not sell its salt.
In addition, the New Mexico Environment Department is taking comments on a new 10-year state permit for WIPP until April 19, said Megan McLean, an environmental scientist with the state agency. A public hearing is expected in September, she said.
