Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
1/23/2015
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board plans to hold a meeting this spring in Carlsbad, N.M., on last year’s incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant that resulted in the ongoing shutdown of the facility. Operations at WIPP have been shut down since a Feb. 5, 2014, truck fire and a Feb. 14 radiological release, impacting waste programs across the Department of Energy complex. DOE’s current recovery plan for WIPP projects that operations may not fully resume until 2019 at a cost of up to $551 million. The date and agenda for the meeting have not yet been announced.
DNFSB Staff Technical Director Steven Stokes told WC Monitor this week that Board staff will recommend the meeting focus on three areas. The first would be to discuss the results of the Department of Energy’s investigation into the fire and radiation leak events, Stokes said. The second focus area would involve the recovery efforts from the two events, while the third would includes any “long-term changes in the mine’s nuclear safety posture given any proposed changes to the safety equipment of the mine,” Stokes said. “For example, if they are going to redesign the ventilation system there would be a lot of questions as to what are the safety concerns with that redesign, how are you performing them and what will be the controls that you use to operate the facility safely.”
It’s too early to tell whether the meeting may result in Board action, such as additional recommendations. But in the aftermath of the WIPP incidents the Board has already taken several actions. Soon after the events, in March 2014 the DNFSB said in a letter to lawmakers that a poor initial response to the event led to unnecessary worker contamination. Additionally, the Board issued a recommendation in September, prompted in part by the WIPP events, which called on DOE to strengthen its emergency response capabilities.
