The Energy Department will host a pair of meetings about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico later this month, including an industry day for those interested in bidding on a contract to build parts of the mine’s new ventilation system.
The first of the two meetings, scheduled for Aug. 8, involves “strategic planning for transuranic waste operations … through fiscal year 2050,” DOE said in a tuesday email to the public. The meeting is on the slate for 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Mountain time at AECOM offices at One Park Square, 6501 Americas Parkway NE, Albuquerque, N.M.
AECOM is the senior partner on Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership.
The second meeting is the industry day for the upcoming ventilation system procurement. That meeting was set at press time for 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mountain time on Aug. 10 at the Walter Gerrells Performing Arts Center, 4012 National Parks Highway, Carlsbad, N.M.
“General construction contractors, suppliers and vendors are invited, and small business enterprises are encouraged to attend,” DOE said in the email. “Work under an approved NQA-1 [Nuclear Quality Assurance-1] program would be required for some portions of the project.”
The department did not say when it might issue a contract for the ventilation system and associated exhaust shaft, though it did say “[t]he project timeframe is anticipated to be April 2018 to March 2020.”
Those interested in attending the industry day can sign up online.
In an appropriations bill passed last week, the House recomended $65 million in fiscal 2018 funding for DOE to design and build a new ventilation system and exhaust shaft at WIPP, to increase underground airflow in the crucial waste disposal facility. Senate appropriators last month approved $40 million for the work.
WIPP is the only deep-underground, permanent disposal site for the radioactively contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste. The facility reopened late last year after a pair of accidents in February 2014, including an underground radiation release, shut the mine down.
Also this week, in a letter to the local Carlsbad Current-Argus newspaper Monday, two local New Mexico officials clamored for Congress to bump up the budget for maintenance at WIPP in fiscal year 2018.
“A significant infrastructure failure could put us back where we were in 2014 — facing several years with a complete inability to receive and emplace shipments,” Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway and John Heaton, chairman of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, wrote in the letter to the editor.
In their letter, the two officials said WIPP needs “a new fire suppression system, IT upgrades, hoist upgrades, significant electrical upgrades and major building repairs.”
Legislation approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 20 would for fiscal 2018 provide “$10,000,000 above the budget request to address maintenance backlog issues” at WIPP, according to the detailed spending report that accompanied the bill. Overall, the Senate’s bill would give WIPP around $300 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The Senate’s bill report did not quantify the total proposed maintenance spend at WIPP for next year. In its fiscal 2018 budget request, unveiled in May, DOE estimated maintenance costs at WIPP for the year would total about $27 million.
The House of Representatives, in a bill passed last week before the chamber adjourned for its August recess, proposed a total 2018 budget of roughly $323 million for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. That about meets DOE’s request.
The House’s bill also meets the White House’s funding request for new construction at WIPP and would provide the roughly $65 million the administration sought to improve the facility’s underground ventilation system. The Senate’s bill would provide only about $40 million for those projects.
