Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
2/13/2015
Though the radiological release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant a year ago this week exposed major issues in the nation’s transuranic waste program, local, state and federal officials are emphasizing progress while acknowledging the remaining substantial hurdles to fully resuming waste operations. On Feb. 5, 2014, a salt haul truck fire in the WIPP underground led to the evacuation of 86 workers, and just days later, on Feb. 14, a chemical reaction is believed to have popped open a waste drum in the WIPP underground and released radiation on the surface. “That day was a tough one for us. We learned a lot,” Joe Franco, Manager of the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office, said last week at a town hall meeting. “It’s been a year now. We’ve made great progress, but I still get choked up about it. It seems like yesterday to me. I will not let anybody forget what we went through.”
WIPP had been seen as a model facility before the incidents with a near-spotless record over 15 years, and was being considered for numerous new missions and held up as an example of community support. Now WIPP and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s transuranic waste program are facing at least $54 million in fines from New Mexico and the repository’s recovery could cost more than $500 million. The shutdown of WIPP has put transuranic waste programs on hold across the country. In the wake of the events, DOE launched numerous investigations, with initial reports faulting a lack of maintenance, emergency response and safety culture issues. WIPP managing contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership brought in a new project manager and a manager for the recovery, and the Department reduced NWP’s available fee by $2 million in connection with the fire.
Meanwhile, at the time of the release Los Alamos was in the midst of a high-profile campaign to ship all aboveground transuranic waste by a hard deadline of mid-2014 set with New Mexico. Even after WIPP was shut down, DOE continued the campaign by shipping LANL drums to Waste Control Specialists in Texas for temporary storage. But in the spring of 2014 a drum processed at Los Alamos was pinpointed as the likely source of the WIPP release, and theories emerged on how mixing organic kitty litter as an absorbent in a volatile waste stream could have led to the reaction. Waste processing at Los Alamos was shut down and suspect LANL drums went under surveillance while LANL’s program fell under a cloud of scrutiny. Four cleanup managers were relieved of their duties, and DOE docked 90 percent of last year’s fee for contractor Los Alamos National Security.
New Mexico: When Will DOE Explain What Caused This?
However, DOE has yet to release its final report on the root cause of the release, a condition that the state has said is necessary to restart operations. New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn said DOE has moved too slowly in its investigation. “This occurred a year ago and the Department of Energy has not released a conclusion as to what caused the release. They were supposed to have that in September. That got pushed to October, that got pushed to December. Now it’s February,” he told WC Monitor this week. “So when are we going to see DOE put that on the table, explain what caused this?”
A complex camera system recently wrapped up photographing all potentially impacted waste drums in the underground, and DOE’s accident investigation team said this week that it has found that the one LANL drum was the source of the release. DOE officials hope to release the final investigative reports late next month. And recovery of the repository is well underway with cleanup and maintenance activities. Last fall, DOE finalized a recovery plan for restarting limited operations in 2016, with a full restart several years later once a new ventilation system is completed. But the Department is not rushing in its recovery, acting Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Mark Whitney said this week. “We don’t want to create a safety incident. It’s a mine that’s now contaminated,” he said at an Energy Communities Alliance Meeting. “We had the issues before it was contaminated. We don’t want to now have issues after it was contaminated. So we have to approach this in a considerate manner, and I think we’re doing that.”
Moniz: $200 Million Uncertainty in New Ventilation System
As transuranic waste programs around the DOE complex are facing a growing backlog and looming milestone deadlines due to the shutdown at WIPP, it’s still uncertain when WIPP will be able to resume waste emplacement operations at previous rates. DOE is targeting 2018, but that depends on funding and the ultimate cost of the new ventilation system. “To give you an idea of the uncertainty, until the engineering analysis is completed we don’t know if it’s going to be a less than $100 million or a $300 million project,” DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz said this week at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. “We do not want to set numbers until we have confidence. So we are moving towards the engineering design completion. That will give us more of a budget and schedule certainty.”
‘We Need to Be Sure to Learn From This And Get it Right’
When the mine restarts, questions will continue to surround its continued safety. After a long positive track record, many officials cited complacency as a key factor in the incidents. “You get complacent and not take the same rigorous degree of caution on every aspect of your operation and you let your guard down for a moment and you’re going to get hurt,” NMED’s Flynn said. “That’s what happened here. I don’t want to be all negative. I’m more convinced than ever that this is a good facility and this can be done safely and we need to be sure we learn from this and get it right.”
Officials in New Mexico said DOE headquarters priorities have been an issue. “Complacency gets driven from the top,” John Heaton, head of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, told WC Monitor this week. “If the top leadership constantly hammering on safety and doing things correctly and reporting problems and trying to fix problems then I don’t think complacency does occur. It’s the leadership attitude.”
When asked what the biggest lesson for regulators is from the events, Flynn said: “I’ve learned that the people, whether it be the contractors or the federal employees at the site, are outstanding professionals and they are truly committed to working with state regulators and to moving the process forward. Problems arise when people from headquarters start getting too actively involved in controlling people at the site.” However, he added that at this point “there does not appear to be real active micromanagement from headquarters.”
Emphasis on Waste Emplaced Questioned
NWP’s contract incentivized waste emplaced in the underground, and DOE’s own investigations found that more emphasis should have been placed on maintenance. “The largest lesson learned for me is making sure that you keep the big picture in the balance,” Franco said this week in a call with reporters. “The focus on production was always a good thing because there was definitely a need for us out in the complex to remove that waste. I think making sure that you keep a good balance between that and the facility and remember that it is an asset for the nation, making sure that the infrastructure, which includes the workforce, the communications piece that goes out to all stakeholders and community, stays at a high rigor to protect that asset.”
Community Should Have Been ‘More Skeptical’
Locals in southeastern New Mexico had largely shown unwavering support for the facility up until the events and had played a key role in getting it sited in the 1990s. “The community was fat, dumb and happy because we were hearing that everything was going perfectly and in the background were all these reports,” Carlsbad’s Heaton said. “We should have been more questioning and more skeptical. There’s just no question about it. When you read the [DOE Accident Investigation Board] reports, they are scathing indictments of incompetence and lack of training and lack of virtually everything. One thing that needs to change is that the contract needs to have a focus on safety and not just on production. When you’ve got a contract that only focuses on putting waste in the hole, then the facility itself is allowed to deteriorate.”
DOE Communications Had Rocky Start
In the initial weeks following the incidents, DOE came under fire by state and local officials for a lack of information on the release and for failing to notify the state in a timely manner of key facts. “The communications need to be plain language and to the people who are effected. Anything short of that begins to leave a void that is filled with hyperbole and untrue facts,” Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) told WC Monitor this week. After pressure from stakeholders across the board, in March 2014 DOE began holding regular Town Hall meetings in Carlsbad and providing daily e-mail updates.
Pearce said the release of DOE’s accident investigation reports was a major victory. “They released a scathing report of the agency and the contractor, and they saw when you are honest with people actually it barely made a ripple in the local community,” Pearce said. “There are things that need to be done, but if they are talking about them they will address them. If you’re hiding them then they won’t do anything.” Despite the concerns, conflicts and numerous issues uncovered, New Mexico lawmakers, state and local officials and DOE have all never questioned whether the facility should be reopened and have remained committed to a restart. Pearce added, “Trust at the end of the day is the basis of the whole thing, local citizens trusting the government to put waste in their county is a huge deal.”
