The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. plans to restart an old ventilation fan soon and was recently criticized by the Department of Energy for poor oversight of a major infrastructure project, according to a recently released scorecard.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) also accepted fewer shipments in the pandemic-beleaguered 2020, taking in 10 shipments of transuranic waste during December and 192 for all of 2020, which was 100 fewer than 2019.
Prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership’s oversight of a now-terminated $135-million subcontract during fiscal 2020 was “not acceptable,” DOE said in a fee scorecard published this week. The prime is now shooting for a Sunday test of an old ventilation fan that is being revived to help with underground air quality, contractor spokesman Donavan Mager said in a Thursday email.
Nevertheless, the department said the Amentum/BWX Technologies team needs to show “additional focus” on capital asset projects, especially on “oversight/management of contractors.”
Overall, the prime contractor earned 75%, or $13.2 million out of a potential $17.6 million in fee, for its work during the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2020. It earned 65% or almost $2.9 million out of $4.4 million in its subjective fee.
Nuclear Waste Partnership has yet to hire a permanent replacement for the subcontractor dismissed during the summer, although a Kiewit subsidiary is doing some of the related work in the interim.
The Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System has been called crucial to bringing WIPP’s waste emplacement rates back to pre-2014 levels. An underground radiation leak in February 2014 damaged the underground and forced the salt mine disposal site out of service for about three years.
DOE rated the contractor only “satisfactory” in the areas of management performance and cost control performance. Nuclear Waste Partnership was deemed “good” in the areas of regulatory compliance and health-safety. It’s mission performance was “very good,” according to the document.
The DOE did credit Nuclear Waste Partnership with keeping shipments at about five per week during most of the pandemic while also replacing five underground salt haul trucks with low-emission equipment.
By contrast, the prime pocketed 83% for its work in fiscal 2019. Nuclear Waste Partnership did not comment on the latest fee scorecard as of Thursday night.
Long-dormant Ventilation Fan Cranking Back Up
Any day now, WIPP management plans a short-duration test of its idle 700-C ventilation fan to increase underground airflow during certain work.
The testing will last about four hours, according to a press release issued Jan. 8 by the DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP.
The test depends upon “very-specific weather conditions,” so delays are possible, according to the release.
In a WIPP town hall presentation last month, managers said restarting the fan would help the facility meet more restrictive underground air quality standards by helping vent underground diesel emissions and reducing the potential for heat stress.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has long favored more airflow to the WIPP underground, according to the December presentation.
Underground air quality has been a concern at WIPP for over two years, and the contractor is taking mitigation measures to improve the situation.
The long-range fix is at least a couple of years away with construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System intended to increase airflow to 540,000 cubic feet per minute, more than triple the current rate. But the timeline for the new ventilation project is being “re-baselined” after termination of the $135-million subcontract for the new system last August, Mager said via email.
The 700-C fan has an unfiltered underground airflow capacity of up to 240,000 cubic feet per minute, or a 94,000 cubic feet per minute increase over the existing systems.
The 700 series fans were last used in 2014, Mager said.
When it comes to disposing of transuranic waste, the 2020 figure is a major drop-off, 100 fewer than the total of 292 for 2019, according to data from DOE’s public website for WIPP.
The December shipments included six from the Idaho National Laboratory and four from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Idaho lab, under a legal mandate to move its transuranic waste out of state, was again the dominant shipper for the year, accounting for just over half (98) of the 192 shipments to WIPP in 2020.
Due to COVID-19 concerns, DOE and prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership cut back to minimal shipping, receiving only two per week on average, during the latter stages of 2020, according to reports filed with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
In one of its latest updates on the virus, the DOE website for WIPP said the facility has confirmed 177 positive cases as of Dec. 21, which was up nine from the prior week.
The shipment pace should increase somewhat to about five per week from DOE-approved generator sites until early February as the underground facility prepares for an annual maintenance outage scheduled to start Feb. 15, said contractor spokesman Mager in an email this week.
