Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/27/2014
While the radiological release that occurred at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant earlier this year and the ongoing shutdown of the facility has not scared away potential host communities for a pilot interim storage facility in the United States, the incident has sent ripples through the international community. DOE issued a report two months ago that, among other findings, blamed a culture of complacency for the contamination release. This complacency has caused those operating repositories or who are seeking to license a repository in other countries to take a hard look at their own operations. “I was in Paris last week and did in fact speak to French colleagues who did not really express much concern over the concept of geological disposal, but there was a general feeling that whatever happened it seemed that operations had become a little relaxed emphasizing that constant vigilance is an absolute prerequisite to both assuring safety and maintaining public confidence,” said Phil Metcalf, a consultant with BBM Consulting.
The WIPP facility, long considered the international standard for what a repository could achieve, has been shut down since a truck fire occurred in early February and a radiological release occurred later that month. Some officials have speculated that it could be as long as three years before the site begins taking waste again. According to the Department’s Accident Investigation Board report released back in April, the radiation release was preceded by poor maintenance, safety culture issues by contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and lax oversight by DOE headquarters and the Carlsbad Field Office. The report also noted that an inadequate filtration system was to blame for the above-ground release that resulted in low levels of exposure to 21 workers.
WIPP’s fall from grace has reverberated throughout the international community. According to John Greeves, a Senior Regulatory and Environmental Consultant with JTG Consulting, it will affect how repositories are licensed in the future. “WIPP was the poster child internationally,” Greeves told RW Monitor. “WIPP was a success story. Well, it’s not a success story anymore. The WIPP event has ripples far beyond WIPP, far beyond DOE, far beyond the United States.” He added, “WIPP did the nuclear waste and disposal business no favors. All you have to do is read the report. There were complacency issues. What message does complacency send to a potential repository host community?” In terms of licensing, he said, “It’s making it harder. It’s hard enough to site a repository to begin with, and now the one shining example that operated for ten years is shut down,” Greeves said.
DGR Affected?
The best case study of the effect WIPP will have on future repositories can be seen in Canada. Ontario Power Generation is seeking to site a low-level radioactive waste repository in Kincardine, Ont. The company is currently going through the licensing process, which includes a public hearing and public comment period. The public hearing step of the process appeared to be completed last fall, but the federal panel reviewing the license application decided to conduct additional hearings starting in September to address outstanding issues, among them: how WIPP affects this repository. “We will have two more weeks of hearings in the community beginning Sept. 9, and one of the things the Joint Review Panel wants to talk about is what happened at the New Mexico facility and what we learned from that to build into our proposed project,” OPG spokesman Neal Kelly said. “In terms of WIPP, we are studying what happened there. We will take a look at what the officials there in New Mexico come up with, and we will take those lessons learned and put them into our plans. At the end of the day, we will end up with a better proposal.”
The proposed repository would be located beneath OPG’s Bruce nuclear facility. OPG plans on storing low and intermediate waste from its Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington power stations at the proposed repository, which would be located 680 meters (approximately 744 yards) below the surface in an isolated rock formation of shale and limestone. Currently, the licensing of the facility is under review by a Joint Review Panel under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. After the public comment period, the review panel will submit an environmental assessment report within 90 days to the federal Minister of the Environment with its recommendations for the path forward. Once the federal government gives the go-ahead, the review panel can issue a license to prepare a site and construct the facility.
