Carlsbad, N.M. Mayor Dale Janway’s nuclear advisory committee on Friday criticized the Energy Department Office of Enterprise Assessments’ timing of its release of a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant safety report that found that WIPP operations were more focused on meeting the facility’s scheduled reopening date than performing activities properly. The analysis examined WIPP operations from May 2014 to May 2015, yet was released last week, the
Carlsbad Current-Argus first
reported.
The five-month gap between the report’s completion and its release “reflects a lack of expediency or seriousness of any of the problems” on the part of DOE, Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force Chairman John Heaton said in an email. “Significant work is going into safety culture change, training and communication, and this delay only serves to undercut the progress being made. Our workforce is working very hard and is excited about the discovery that every person and their job are as important as anyone else’s and they must be serious and responsible.” Heaton added that at the time of the release, most issues cited within the report had been resolved, apparently diluting the value of the report’s release.
EA’s report found that certain tasks “were being executed in unsafe work conditions at WIPP, such as workers incorrectly changing out a filter in March or overtime not being sufficiently tracked, all because of WIPP officials being focused on staying on track for its schedule,” the above-linked article states. Heaton said “blaming the schedule is ridiculous” in light of the fact that DOE Headquarters approved the recovery timetable. “Besides, schedules are…not perfect, but very important to measure progress. It is naïve to think a schedule as complicated as this wouldn’t have changes and contingencies,” he said. Heaton added: It is “very unprofessional as a regulator to not deliver deficiencies immediately upon completing an inspection so corrective actions can be implemented immediately.”
An
Albuquerque Journal article cited Philip Breidenbach, president of site contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, as saying NWP is taking the report seriously but adding that significant progress has been made over the past four months on many of the issues raised. “We agree those were issues last year,” The
Journal quoted Breidenbach as saying. “We have focused substantial effort on making improvements in those areas.”
