Energy Department contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership was back on the job preparing to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) only about two days after the latest rockfall in the deep underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., the agency wrote on its website late Tuesday.
Workers with Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) made their way back underground Saturday, and by Sunday “geotechnical engineers had analyzed the data and concluded that all of the non-prohibited areas were stable,” Todd Shrader, manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a prepared statement..
No one was hurt in the rockfall in Room 4 of Panel 7 on Thursday, and there was no radiation release. Nevertheless, DOE and NWP evacuated the mine. This was the fourth collapse this year at WIPP, which DOE and NWP appear on track to open by late December or early January after more than two years of suspended operations.
In February 2014, an improperly packaged barrel of transuranic waste blew open in Panel 7 and leaked radiation into WIPP. The mine has since been closed to shipments of transuranic waste from other DOE sites. Shrader has said those shipments could resume by April.
WIPP’s naturally shifting salt walls and ceilings must be reinforced periodically to prevent collapses. Since 2014, DOE and NWP have done less preventive maintenance in the mine’s southern end, which has for years been filled with waste, and focused caretaking on the mine’s northern end, where usable space remains.
In October, the agency announced that rather than trying to reclaim corridors in the mine’s south end for waste emplacement, it would instead close down and seal off that section of the mine sooner than planned. Closure activities require a modification to the company’s WIPP operating permit from the state of New Mexico. The modification had not been announced at press time for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
No one was hurt in the other three collapses this year, which all took place in parts of the mine that have been off limits to workers for years.
