The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is seeking to modify its New Mexico hazardous waste facility permit in order to dig a new ventilation shaft to increase underground airflow.
The new shaft will extend from the surface to the underground mine used for disposal of DOE transuranic waste. The shaft is a major facet of the new permanent ventilation system planned for WIPP. The Energy Department and WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership filed the modification request with the New Mexico Environment Department in November.
The new ventilation system should be complete in 2022. It would increase airflow in the underground disposal facility to 540,000 cubic feet per minute, exceeding the airflow level at the time of the pair of February 2014 accidents that forced WIPP offline for nearly three years. The new system is meant to ensure WIPP can simultaneously conduct full-scale mining and waste emplacement operations.
Shaft No. 5, as it is referred to in the permit modification request, would be located about 1,200 feet west of the existing air intake shaft. It would become the chief source of intake air for the underground facility, where Nuclear Waste Partnership is about to resume salt mining.
On the surface, Shaft No. 5 will be equipped with a steel cover to keep the intake air moving to the underground. The exhaust shaft will be procured separately from most of the surface buildings for the permanent ventilation system. WIPP is still developing a cost estimate for the new shaft.
The other big capital asset project connected with the new permanent ventilation system is a complex on the surface that will encompass a 55,000-square-foot filter building, a salt reduction building that is about half that size, and standby diesel generators and various ancillary equipment.
A request for proposals for construction of these surface buildings connected could be issued within weeks, with a pre-bid conference scheduled for Jan. 9 in Carlsbad, officials said last week during a WIPP Town Hall meeting.
