The Department of Energy and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership have made strides in updating safety procedures at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., but there are still “significant challenges” to surmount if the facility is to reopen in December as planned, according to a new report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA).
“While conduct of operations improvements have been achieved by NWP and has resulted in more consistent and safer work activities, significant challenges still remain to fully meet DOE requirements and consistently implement established procedural requirements,” EA wrote in its “Assessment of Selected Conduct of Operations Processes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” released last week.
The report focused generally on operational procedures at the nation’s only permanent storage facility for the radio-contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste.
The biggest shortcoming the office noticed in a visit to the site was that Nuclear Waste Partnership modified one of WIPP’s safety systems — a fire suppression system that needed a new tank-level indicator for its water tank — by issuing instructions through a maintenance order, rather than submitting the proposed change for review to engineers on site and letting them pass judgement on whether, and how, to proceed, according to the report.
“NWP did not follow its temporary change procedure, did not obtain the required engineering change order, and did not have a qualified cognizant engineer review the package,” the report reads.
EA based its report on a one-month inspection at WIPP that started in early December 2015, according to the 11-page report. WIPP has been closed since 2014 because of an accidental radiation release and unrelated underground fire. DOE plans to reopen the facility in mid-December. Appropriations bills working their way through Congress each would provide more for the facility in fiscal 2017 than the roughly $270 million the White House requested.
