WC Monitor
12/11/2015
IN EM
Workers have installed more than 5,400 steel bolts in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in the year since ground control operations resumed at the subterranean transuranic waste storage site, the Department of Energy said last week.
The bolts are one element of the advancing program to increase safety for personnel in the underground facility, which has been undergoing recovery since a fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release in February 2014. Both new and replacement bolts have been placed in contaminated and uncontaminated sectors of the facility, DOE said. “These bolts help support and slow the natural movement that occurs in the underground salt formation where WIPP is located,” according to the update. There is no set number of bolts for completion of the project, a department spokesperson said by email; DOE hopes to complete “catch-up bolting/ground control” by early fiscal 2017, but “we will continue bolting and ground control operations in order to provide the necessary margin of safety in the WIPP underground.”
WIPP expects by the end of next month to begin operating a second hybrid bolter, a tool that can be powered by diesel fuel or electricity and will augment ground control operations. “Under the current limited ventilation conditions, the amount of diesel equipment that can be operated in the WIPP underground at any given time is restricted,” DOE said. “ The hybrid machines allow for additional bolting activities, without impacting other operations that require the use of diesel equipment.”
WIPP last week also halted recovery operations for a day while it replaced 21 high-efficiency filters from each of its two filter units in the facility’s Underground Ventilation System, according to a release issued Thursday.
The department has said it plans to issue a new performance measurement baseline for reopening WIPP by the end of the year. There was no update on the schedule as of this week, according to the spokesperson. The document would replace a plan that called for resuming operations at the site by March 2016, at a cost of $242 million. Energy officials now say the facility should be operating again by the close of next year.
The Department of Energy on Monday said it had awarded a contract worth up to $9.4 million for technical, engineering, and programmatic support for the Office of Environmental Management headquarters in Washington, D.C., and other EM locations.
Link Technologies of Germantown, Md., offered the sole response to the solicitation for the contract that features a one-year base period with two one-year options, according to an EM press release.
Activities covered by the contract, the release states, include engineering and technical reviews; quality assurance and safety software quality assurance; technical and subject matter expert assistance; assisting program offices in safety oversight and addressing recommendations from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board; and “Developing and revising safety policy, safety research and performance analysis, resolving differing professional opinions, and conducting event investigations.”
The department on Thursday also released a request for proposals for a contractor to provide information technology services to EM headquarters in Washington, D.C. Services under the contract will include IT capital planning, cybersecurity, records management, and cloud services. The contract will be a 100-percent set-side for small businesses, with a two-year base and three single-year options.
Further information can be found at https://www.emcbc.doe.gov/SEB/EM_HQ_IT_Services/. Comments, questions, recommended amendments, and other feedback should be sent via email by 4 p.m. Dec. 17 to Jodi Gordon at [email protected].
IN THE INDUSTRY
AREVA on Wednesday said its Federal Services branch had received an $8.6 million contract from the Department of Energy to design and produce prototype railcars for transport of nuclear material. The contract covers transport cask cars that would carry spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive material (HLRM), as well as “buffer” cars that would separate the material in transit from the locomotive.
The Association of American Railroads would certify all concepts for HLRM shipment before production could begin. All phases of design and fabrication are to be completed by 2019, according to AREVA. In total, the company would build one prototype cask railcar and two buffer cars.
More than 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel is in temporary storage at nuclear plants across the country. The Department of Energy is charged with establishing a permanent repository for the material, but the Obama administration halted work on the planned Yucca Mountain site in Nevada in favor of a plan for decomingling defense and commercial waste at separate storage facilities.
DOE’s current plan calls for beginning operation of a pilot national consolidated interim repository by 2021 and to locate and license a larger facility by 2025, AREVA noted. “Safe and reliable transportation is a vital component of our country’s integrated nuclear waste disposition program,” Tom Franch, president of AREVA Federal Services, said in a press release. “With our commitment to operational excellence and more than 50 years of international experience in nuclear material transportation, we have the resources and expertise to support the DOE’s effort to plan and to develop options for execution of this program.”
The project team led by AREVA Federal Services will include KAGRO Rail, which makes the sole cask car presently approved for shipping HLRM material; the Transportation Technology Center for railcar modeling and testing services; and Stoller Newport News Nuclear and MHF Services for design analyses.
AREVA said the question of whether the contract could lead to a deal for production of railcars for waste transport operations was “beyond our scope of work.” DOE had not responded to questions on the contract as of press time.
