The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wants the Department of Energy to brief it by mid-July on the new underground ventilation system being installed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Chair Joyce Connery requested a briefing on the continuous air monitoring system for the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System in a May 15 letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
The letter says DOE prime for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has yet to show the air monitoring for the new ventilation system now being commissioned can detect a radiological release in the WIPP underground and automatically block it from reaching the surface.
In the letter, the DNFSB asks DOE and its prime, Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, to brief the board within 60 days of receipt of the letter. It also wants a written response in that timeframe.
An underground radiological release in February 2014, caused when a drum from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico overheated and ruptured, forced the transuranic waste disposal site offline for three years. The Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System is designed to provide 540,000 cubic feet per minute of underground airflow, roughly triple the current level.
The new Confinement Ventilation System is designed to filter potentially contaminated underground air before it is released to the environment.
Although WIPP is an underground salt mine, DOE has yet to show the air monitoring system will operate reliably “in the environment of airborne salt particles from normal mining operations,” DNFSB said.
DNFSB staff believe that WIPP’s current plan relies too much on administrative controls, limits on working procedures, rather than engineering controls, barriers to protect workers, to reduce the risk of accidents at the waste shaft station.
The DNFSB also said DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office has not provided sufficient oversight of WIPP electrical and instrument safety, partly due to staffing shortages.
Currently, waste emplacement and mining cannot take place at the same time at WIPP. That could change with commissioning of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System. WIPP’s preliminary documented safety analysis allows waste emplacement and mining to occur simultaneously, DNFSB said.