A new ventilation system to dramatically increase underground airflow at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is more than half finished and should start operating during the summer of 2026, according to materials presented at last week’s Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix.
The overall Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is 58% complete and is scheduled to receive final approval in June 2026, according to a joint presentation by Janelle Armijo, the federal project director for DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, and Steve Smith, capital infrastructure manager for WIPP’s prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership.
The total project cost is now expected to be $494 million, up from the $400-to-$450-million range cited by DOE a year ago.
The high-profile project will provide the WIPP underground with up to 540,000 cubic feet per minute of airflow, enough for the facility to carry out maintenance, salt mining and transuranic waste disposal at the same time, according to DOE. That has not been possible since a February 2014 underground radiation leak that damaged the underground and kept the disposal complex out of service for about three years.
A Kiewit subsidiary is Nuclear Waste Partnership’s subcontractor on the project now, after an earlier subcontracting arrangement ended somewhat acrimoniously.
Two new surface structures that are part of the SSCVS — the New Filter Building and the Salt Reduction Building—are both a little more than half finished, according to the presentation. Crews will continue sinking a Utility Shaft to provide higher-capacity air intake for the underground in conjunction with the SSCVS system later this spring, Nuclear Waste Partnership president Sean Dunagan said on the sidelines of the conference.
Last fall New Mexico agreed to let the shaft sinking project to resume toward an eventual depth of 2,100 feet. The shaft started under a temporary work authorization that was not immediately renewed in part because of the high incidence of COVID-19 locally at the time.
The DOE’s final critical decision for operations of the shaft is expected in December 2023, according to the Armijo-Smith presentation. The cost of the Utility Shaft is expected to be just under $200 million ($197 million).
On the regulatory front, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared DOE’s “recertification” of the WIPP facility, filed in 2019, “complete” in late November 2021, said Paul Shoemaker of Sandia National Laboratories. The EPA is supposed to rule on application within six months after deeming it complete, he said, so the decision would presumably be issued by May 26.
