The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 20 shipments of transuranic waste during January, which represents its highest monthly total since October, according to the facility’s online waste information database.
There were 12 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory and eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The figure is the highest monthly total since the 25 received at the underground salt mine during October.
The total shipments in January is double the 10 received in December and higher than the 15 received in November. Year over year, shipments slipped from the 24 received in January 2020.
Staffing limits stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in fewer shipments late in 2020, as low as two a week in December, managers at the site told the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently.
However, February and March shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) are likely to be few. An annual maintenance outage started this week and is slated to run through April 14, top managers of the DOE Carlsbad Field Office and the prime contractor said during a virtual briefing for New Mexico state lawmakers last week. There will be nearly 100 work chores including bulkhead inspection and replacements and electrical repairs.
WIPP received only 192 shipments during 2020, 100 below the 292 recorded in 2019. DOE cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the single largest reason for the falloff.
Throughput is not expected to reach pre-2014 levels until construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System is finished. But the cost and schedule for the ventilation system is being re-baselined after the prime fired the subcontractor chiefly responsible for its construction in August of last year.
WIPP disposed of 724 shipments of transuranic waste in 2013, the last full year of operation prior to a major accident.
In February 2014, a ruptured drum caused a radiation leak at WIPP that contaminated part of the WIPP underground and effectively idled the facility for about three years.
New Mexico Hearing on WIPP Shaft Set for May
The New Mexico Environment Department plans will consider DOE’s plan to sink a new utility shaft at WIPP in a Zoom hearing starting on May 17, according to a scheduling order dated Feb. 12.
The order from state Hearing Officer Gregory Chakalian says the first day’s proceedings will run from 12 noon through 4 p.m. Mountain Time before taking a break and resuming at 6 p.m. The hearing will continue on subsequent days under the same schedule until it is complete.
The order says parties filing evidence or testimony in the case should do so by May 3. Non-technical comments can be submitted before or during the hearing to state Environment Department hearing clerk Madai Corral, [email protected].
In November, Stephanie Stringer, the resource protection director for the New Mexico Environment Department, refused to extend a six-month temporary work authorization that expired in October. Stringer cited 20 positive COVID-19 tests during the first full week in November as one reason for not re-upping the temporary work order.
Resumption of work on the utility shaft is considered a 2021 priority at WIPP near Carlsbad, N.M., and work on the permit modification request for shaft No. 5, as it is also known, is going forward, the manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, Reinhard Knerr said in the online briefing for New Mexico lawmakers.
Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers is to drill the shaft under a $75-million contract awarded in August 2019 by the Amentum-led WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership. Project completion is targeted for 2022. When finished, the final shaft will measure 26 feet in diameter and extend to 2,275 feet below the surface. Surface prep work and excavation of the first 120 feet or so occurred prior to work being suspended last fall.
The contract also calls for mining two access drifts, or tunnels, which will connect the shaft with the existing WIPP underground, the prime contractor said when announcing the contract award.
In addition to providing an alternate entryway underground, the shaft will work in tandem with the planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, Knerr said during his presentation. That major ventilation project, crucial to restoring WIPP disposal throughput to normal levels while simultaneously allowing the prime to mine out new storage space, is being re-baselined after the Nuclear Waste Partnership terminated a subcontractor agreement in August 2020.
Two advocacy groups, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Southwest Research and Information Center question why WIPP needs the new utility shaft in addition to the new ventilation project. The critics have asserted DOE is really out to increase the waste-disposal mission of WIPP beyond the existing maximum of 175,500 cubic meters of defense-related transuranic waste.
