The Amentum-led prime that manages the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has terminated a $135 million subcontract for construction of a new ventilation system.
Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) on Monday announced the dismissal of Critical Applications Alliance (CCA) from the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) project. The contractor said it and the Energy Department “determined that termination of the subcontract is necessary to ensure the quality, safety, and timely completion of this important project,” according to a brief emailed statement.
Nuclear Waste Partnership will immediately begin procurement of a new subcontractor to complete construction of the SSCVS. It declined further comment.
The prime contractor and DOE announced in November that CAA, a venture comprised of Houston-based Christensen Building Group and Kilgore Industries, would build the project designed to boost underground airflow at the transuranic waste site by more than three times the present level of roughly 170,000 cubic feet per minute. The Energy Department has said increasing airflow for workers is key toward allowing simultaneous mining, waste emplacement, and maintenance. The DOE hoped the project would be finished in 2021.
The agency said in 2018 the CAA ventilation contract called for construction of the largest containment fan system among the department’s facilities and the largest WIPP infrastructure project in 30 years.
Officials anticipate the ventilation project will help return WIPP to the waste emplacement levels it recorded prior to a February 2014 fire and underground radiation release that forced the disposal facility out of service for about three years. Before the accident, WIPP emplaced 724 shipments in 2013. By comparison, there were only 292 in 2019.
The overall ventilation project is comprised of construction of surface structures including a salt reduction facility, a new filter building, and diesel-powered electric generators. A new underground shaft is being installed under a different subcontract; DOE has recently said that work is going well.
