The federal fiscal 2017 budget request unveiled Tuesday proposed a monumental, long-term change for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico: making the facility the final destination for 34 metric tons of diluted weapon-usable plutonium that would arrive sometime in the early 2020s.
In the near term, the White House proposed lowering WIPP’s annual appropriation by about 10 percent compared with 2016 levels, to $271 million, which the administration says is enough to reopen the nation’s only disposal facility for transuranic waste by December.
In January, the Department of Energy approved, but did not share, a new performance measurement baseline for WIPP, which detailed the agency’s plan for restarting waste emplacement at the site. WIPP has been closed since an underground fire and unrelated underground radiation release in February 2014.
The latest budget request, however, sheds some light on the pace DOE intends to set as it marches toward resumption of waste shipments to the underground salt cavern some 25 miles outside of Carlsbad, N.M.
Steps leading to and following the reopening include:
- Completing a documented safety analysis revision in March.
- Startup of the interim ventilation system in April.
- Conducting a contractor operational readiness review for resumption of interim waste emplacement operations in July.
- Conducting a DOE operational readiness review for resumption of interim waste emplacement operations in September.
- Resuming waste emplacement operations of wastes stored on-site at other DOE facilities in December.
- Complete supplemental ventilation upgrades in the second quarter of fiscal 2017.
According to one informed source, DOE’s internal date to reopen WIPP is Dec. 15, just over two months into the fiscal 2017.
Elsewhere in the WIPP request, the White House proposed a significant pullback for a pair of construction projects the agency said were not crucial to making its self-imposed December reopening date. The 2017 request includes just $2.5 million each for WIPP’s new exhaust shaft and design and construction of the new safety significant confinement ventilation system — declines of about 66 percent and 89 percent, respectively, from 2016 levels.
“While these projects are not needed to support the resumption of waste emplacement operations, they are needed to provide the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ventilation necessary for disposal of transuranic waste operations in both ‘clean’ and contaminated underground areas, and for simultaneous mine stability, mining, maintenance, and waste emplacement activities,” the budget request reads.
Meanwhile, DOE is also proposing more money to tighten standards and practices for shipping waste to WIPP in 2017. The department already has issued a request for information regarding the new shipping program. Interested vendors have until Feb. 18 to reply. The agency has not said when a solicitation will hit the street, but the White House has requested some $27 million for WIPP shipping in 2017, about $4 million more than the 2016 appropriation.
In a Tuesday press briefing, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said DOE is again proposing to change the U.S. strategy for disposing of 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium by diluting the material, mixing it with a solid, and sending it to WIPP for burial.
The plan of record, under an arms-reduction pact finalized with Russia in 2010, is to turn that 34 tons of material into fuel suitable for commercial nuclear plants using the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at DOE’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. However, the White House’s 2017 budget proposal calls for shutting the MOX plant down over three years or so, and diverting the diluted plutonium to WIPP.
Diluted plutonium from a separate tranche of weapons-grade material, meanwhile, could begin arriving in New Mexico by 2022 or 2023, Moniz said in the briefing with reporters; there is a significant backlog of other WIPP-bound waste to deal with first.
One lawmaker from New Mexico said he welcomes as much waste as WIPP can safely handle, once the facility actually reopens.
“The first and only priority for everyone involved must remain reopening WIPP as safely, and effectively as possible,” Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) whose congressional district includes WIPP, said by email on Friday. “Once reopen, I fully expect WIPP to resume its mission disposing of transuranic waste from around the nation. Any and all transuranic material that meets WIPP’s standards should continue to be disposed of at the site. It is vital to the health and safety of the nation and New Mexico.”
