The Department of Energy’s prime at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico says a ventilation fan that has been dormant for years will start operating again during the New Year.
“While the 700-C fan is functionally operational and has been through all of the necessary testing and monitoring, including underground testing and balancing that are needed to bring the fan into service, a decision was made to wait until after the upcoming scheduled outages over the next few weeks and the holidays to put the fan into operation,” a spokesperson for DOE contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership said by email Thursday.
A staff report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board dated Nov. 5 said that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) started a 40-hour test of the 700-C fan in late October. After finishing the 40-hour test, the WIPP contractor conferred with DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office to see if the 700-C fan could run full-time.
During a town hall-style presentation on Nov. 18, Reinhard Knerr, DOE manager of the Carlsbad office, said about half the data from the 40-hour test was analyzed and showed no safety or environmental concerns. At that time, Knerr said the agency envisioned operations starting before year’s end.
Deploying the unfiltered 700-C legacy fan, idle since before a February 2014 underground radiation leak that kept WIPP offline for about three years, should increase airflow in the underground during non-waste-handling operations, Knerr said.
“The 700-C fan will act as a bridge until the SSCVS [Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System] is online” sometime around 2025, the DOE manager said during the presentation.
Restarting the fan should add about 90,000 cubic feet per minute of airflow, for a total underground airflow of about 240,000 cubic feet per minute. When the new safety significant system gets going in a few years, underground airflow should reach 540,000 cubic feet per minute, DOE has said.
The DOE and WIPP have been talking about restarting the fan throughout the year, and had hoped to have it operating a few months ago.
