When the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico gets its permanent ventilation system installed in a few years, it will have to dispose of an increased amount of low-level filtration wastes, according to a recent supplemental analysis from the DOE.
The permanent ventilation system’s new filter building will contain far more waste from high-efficiency particulate air filters than the current ventilation setup, according to the November analysis. “This will result in the disposal of around 4,500 filters per year. This equates to 18,000 cubic feet of uncompacted filter waste annually,” according to the analysis. Current ventilation accounts for less than 1,000 cubic feet of filter waste annually.
Filter waste typically meets the conditions for disposal as low-level radioactive waste and must be sent to either a DOE or commercial low-level radioactive waste site. This should not be a big deal for WIPP since it already has the equipment and expertise to ship the filters to a low-level waste disposal facility, DOE said in the analysis.
WIPP will hold a pre-bid solicitation conference on Jan. 9 in Carlsbad, N.M., for contractors interested in bidding on constructing a new filter building and salt reduction project, which will comprise a big part of the new ventilation system. A new exhaust shaft will also be developed in connection with the permanent ventilation project.
The planned permanent system would provide 540,000 actual cubic feet per minute of airflow. That’s higher than the flow rate prior to a couple of February 2014 accidents that closed WIPP for three years.
WIPP has called the permanent ventilation system vital to restoring full-scale salt mining and waste emplacement at the nation’s only underground site for transuranic waste. Construction on the ventilation system is expected to begin in early 2018 and be operational by 2022.
