Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
2/6/2015
The “Project Reach” campaign at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, intended to help determine the exact cause of a radiological release that occurred last year at the facility, wrapped up late last week and officials say they have not discovered anything unexpected. The completion of the effort is expected to be one of the final steps before the Department of Energy’s Accident Investigation Board completes its report on the root cause of the WIPP radiological release that led to the current shutdown of the facility. The release is believed to have originated in a breached drum discovered last year in Panel 7 Room 7 of the WIPP underground, and Project Reach’s recent photographic and video examination of the area found no anomalies or other potentially breached drum, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Joe Franco said this week at a WIPP town hall meeting. “There was no other potential container in there,” he said.
Project Reach involved a 90-foot boom with an aerial camera that was designed to be able to photographic all of the drums in the room from above. A second deployable camera could be lowered down between drums to take photos of the sides of the containers. The camera system was installed in Room 7 and controlled remotely under direction by the Accident Investigation Board team. DOE’s Accident Investigation Board is currently analyzing the images, which will be released later, officials said. The Department has posted a video of tests of the system.
Moniz: AIB Report to be Released This Quarter
DOE has been working for nearly a year on its investigation into what triggered the Feb. 14 release in the facility’s underground, but will release its final report soon, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said early this week. “It’s very close. It will be out in this quarter,” Moniz said during a briefing with reporters on DOE’s Fiscal year 2016 budget request. “Certainly our understanding is that first of all, not only the report but the observations continue to support that there was one container that was the issue and secondly it would be fair to say that the combination of materials that could have driven an exothermic event has essentially been confirmed.”
