All eyes turn to Carlsbad, N.M., on Thursday, where the Energy Department and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will appear for a webcast town hall meeting to reassure the public about the suddenly escalating number of ceiling collapses in the deep-underground salt mine.
So far, DOE has been unequivocal: no personnel were hurt in the collapses — which at any rate happened in parts of the mine workers may not access without permission from management — and the accidents will not affect the agency’s plan to reopen the WIPP in December or January.
WIPP personnel discovered one collapse near the disused Panel 4 disposal area on Sept. 27, then another on Oct. 4 near the disused Panel 3 disposal cell. A third occurred Friday near Panel 3, prompting DOE to issue a statement that day on the WIPP website that additional collapses in the area are likely, though not expected to affect ongoing efforts to reopen the mine. Both Panel 3 and Panel 4 have been filled with waste and sealed up.
In addition, DOE said, engineers elected Oct. 3 to intentionally bring down a foot-thick section of ceiling a little smaller than a pool table in room five of Panel 7 after discovering cracks in the area where the roof meets the mine walls. Panel 7 is the disposal cell contaminated by an accidental underground radiation release in 2014. DOE said the decision to intentionally bring down some of the ceiling in this area was routine work that will not affect the mine’s reopening. That decision had not previously been disclosed in official statements about ongoing mine upkeep last week.
WIPP’s ceilings and walls naturally shift and must be periodically reinforced. Toward the south end of the mine, where disposal cells are full or filling up, DOE has put off this maintenance to focus personnel and resources on reinforcing the northern end of the mine, where workers will begin interring shipments of transuranic waste from across the DOE complex after WIPP reopens nearly three years after a pair of accidents in February 2014..
Against this backdrop, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) — led by AECOM and BWX Technologies — enters the final year of guaranteed money on its WIPP prime contract with DOE.
The contract’s five-year base period — worth about $1 billion, including modifications that had added roughly $400 million of base value as of this summer — began in 2012 and expires on Sept. 30, 2017.
After that, DOE holds a one-year option and a four-year option which, if exercised, would run the deal out through September 2022 at a cost of roughly $960 million.
The one-year option covers WIPP operations, plus construction of key elements of a permanent ventilation system that will allow additional workers to perform more work in the underground. The option would begin Sept. 30, 2017, and is worth an estimated $220 million.
The four-year option, which would kick in on Sept.30, 2018, covers WIPP operations and follow-on ventilation work through Sept. 30, 2022, and is worth an estimated $740 million.
If DOE exercises all options, NWP’s contract will be worth about $2 billion.
