The management and operations contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., is reviewing bid proposals from companies hoping to build a new permanent underground ventilation system for deep-underground disposal site.
Bid proposals were received March 21 and are now under review, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesperson Donavan Mager said Thursday by email. NWP will enter into the contract with the successful bidder and manage the contractor directly.
In various public presentations, WIPP officials have suggested the contract should be awarded this spring.
NWP anticipates construction on the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System would start this summer. Construction of a new Filter Building on the surface is slated for August after the power company, Xcel Energy, has relocated an overhead electric transmission line that runs over the construction site, Mager said.
The ventilation project will cost roughly $273 million, the Department of Energy has estimated. The agency requested roughly $90 million for the ventilation system for the 2019 fiscal year.
The Department of Energy and NWP have said a new permanent ventilation system is crucial to helping WIPP get back to full-scale operations for both transuranic waste emplacement and underground salt mining.
The new ventilation system should increase underground airflow to about 540,000 cubic feet per minute, or more than three times the current rate of airflow. The agency’s Carlsbad Field Office has said it hopes to have the new ventilation system operational around 2021.
In February 2014, a fire and underground radiation release forced WIPP out of operation for about three years. WIPP resumed accepting shipments of transuranic waste from other Department of Energy sites in April 2017. The facility took in 133 shipments from other sites in 2017.
In January, for the first time since February 2014, WIPP resumed limited salt-mining operations.
