The Department of Energy said this week early commissioning is underway for the much-anticipated Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, designed to triple underground airflow at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Testing commenced last month for some of the electrical cables that will supply power to the motors, fans and other equipment for the ventilation system, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a Tuesday press release.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad is the nation’s only deep underground disposal site for defense-related transuranic waste.
Commissioning is a gradual process to eventually integrate the new ventilation system into daily WIPP operations, said Ralph Musick, capital asset projects manager for Bechtel-led Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP.
The commissioning process should be complete in mid-2024, a DOE spokesperson said by email Wednesday.
As construction winds down, key systems for the ventilation project are turned over for testing as part of the commissioning process, DOE said. Once fully deployed, the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System should produce 540,000 cubic feet of airflow per minute, up from the 170,000 cubic feet now.
WIPP managers have said this should enable the underground salt mine to do maintenance, salt mining and disposal of transuranic waste simultaneously. This is something that has not been possible since a February 2014 accident where a waste drum ruptured and radiologically contaminated parts of the WIPP underground.
In June, Mark Bollinger, the head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, said the ventilation system could start operating sometime in 2024. At the time, Bollinger also said work on the ventilation project was roughly 83% complete.
The Joe Biden administration has sought $44 million for the project in fiscal 2024, down from $59 million in fiscal 2023 and $65 million in fiscal 2022. The total project cost is listed at $316 million in DOE’s 2024 budget justification document.
In April 2021, a Kiewit company was hired to finish the ventilation project after the original subcontractor on the ventilation system was fired.
The new ventilation system is meant to work together with a new underground utility shaft, which recently reached the required depth of about 2,200 feet.
But after work on the shaft reached the required depth, a safety pause was instituted in October following a “hoisting mishap” in which nobody was hurt, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
“The safety pause will remain in place until management approves a revised Hoisting and Rigging Plan,” according to the board report dated Nov. 3.
WIPP officials did not respond to a request for comment last week.
