A three-day New Mexico Environment Department hearing on the need for a new underground shaft for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant kicked off this week with a lawyer for DOE saying the case is not about a life extension for the transuranic waste disposal site.
The hearing is about efforts to “restore a crippled ventilation system” that has slowed operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) “to a crawl,” said Michael Woodward, the attorney for DOE and prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, in his opening remarks Monday.
“Air to an underground mine is like blood to a body,” Woodward said. Without airflow to the work area 2,100 feet below the surface, WIPP cannot operate, he added.
The DOE and its contractor seek to modify the existing hazardous waste permit to add language allowing a new air intake shaft, also known as Shaft No. 5, Woodward said.
While increasing the amount of underground airflow is important, the ability to “direct and filter contaminated air”— mitigate the release of contaminated air to the surface and keep any bad air away from underground workers — is also vital, Woodward said.
Last November, the state refused to renew a temporary work authorization on sinking the new shaft in part because of the high number of COVID-19 cases at WIPP during that time.
The new shaft amendment is supported by the New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau. Sometime after this week’s testimony, Administrative Law Judge Gregory Chakalian will make a recommendation to the New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney, who will make the final decision.
Critics of the new utility shaft, No. 5, assert that DOE and its contractor will get many of the same air quality benefits from the planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System that, after a long wait and some false starts, is supposed to be ready at WIPP by 2025.
This upgraded ventilation system is designed to provide about 540,000 cubic feet per minute to the underground, which is more than triple the current level. Last month, the prime hired a new subcontractor to replace the replacement subcontractor fired last summer.
The Shaft No. 5 permit is opposed by groups such as Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the Southwest Research and Information Center and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. Among other things, the groups question if a nearly $200-million investment in the shaft is justified given that WIPP is currently supposed to stop waste disposal by 2030 unless DOE is able to get the state permit extended through 2050. The DOE filed for a permit renewal in 2020.
That application is still under review, New Mexico Environment Department spokeswoman Maddy Hayden said in a Tuesday email. The disposal phase for WIPP started in 1999 and was expected to go on for 25 years. After that, there was to be a nominally 10-year period for decommissioning and closure. So the disposal phase under the original permit is expected to extend until 2024 with final closure certification being 2034, Hayden said.
“It is expected that new closure dates and details will be addressed in the permit renewal process,” Hayden said in the email.
The advocacy groups have tried unsuccessfully to have the utility shaft proceedings combined with the larger permit renewal case, Joni Arends, executive director of the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, said recently in a radio interview.
Robert Kehrman, an engineer with more than 30 years of experience, said during testimony Monday that the new utility shaft will, working in tandem with the new ventilation system, enable WIPP to once again “multitask” by doing waste emplacement, maintenance and salt mining at the same time.
That is an ability the underground disposal site has lacked since a 2014 underground radiation leak led to a nearly three-year shutdown at the mine, Kehrman said.
While limited operations resumed in 2017, “limited is the key word,” Woodward said.
However, Lindsay Lovejoy, the attorney for Southwest Research and Information Center said this argument itself carries limited weight unless the state allows further waste disposal beyond 2024. For example, the only salt mining now being done is to develop the new Panel 8 for waste disposal and that panel is supposed to be ready by January 2022, Lovejoy said.
