After a pause this summer, the contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., expects next week to resume salt mining to dig out more disposal space.
This will be the first mining in storage Panel 8 since late July or early August, according to Nuclear Waste Partnership spokesman Donavan Mager.
Mining was suspended so DOE and its contractor could remedy roof bolting and other ground control issues in other parts of the underground transuranic waste site, they told the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Ground control is a mining term to describe upkeep of underground shafts, intended to keep evacuation routes open and protect workers from being hurt or killed by falling rock. The Energy Department is supposed to submit a report on WIPP ground control to both congressional Appropriations committees within 60 days of President Donald Trump signing the fiscal 2019 “minibus” funding bill that covers the Department of Energy. Congress last week passed the legislation, which includes $7.2 billion for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
In January of this year, salt mining resumed for the first time since an underground fire and radiological release in February 2014 closed WIPP for about three years. But progress is going slower than DOE had envisioned. The agency had hoped to mine 50,000 tons of salt from Panel 8 in fiscal 2018, but the facility is on pace to extract only between 35,000 and 40,000 tons, the federal agency said in August.
Among other reasons, there is only one operating mining machine at the WIPP underground.
The site’s current underground airflow of roughly 150,000 cubic feet per minute cannot support simultaneous mining, waste emplacement, and maintenance, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manage Todd Shrader said at a conference last week. A new permanent system should boost airflow to more than 500,000 cubic feet per minute starting as early as 2021.
Waste disposal continues in Panel 7 at WIPP. Panel 8 is due to open in 2021.
