For the second time in just over a week, the Energy Department has discovered a partial ceiling collapse at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The latest collapse was discovered Tuesday near the entrance to the disused Panel 3 storage area, which was filled to capacity with transuranic waste from across the DOE complex and has been sealed up since 2007, DOE said in a press release Wednesday afternoon.
“No employees were present at the time of the rock fall,” according to DOE’s statement.
The area near Panel 3 also suffered a partial collapse in 2015. Access to the area has been restricted by WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) since 2014, meaning anyone wishing to go to that part of the mine had to first secure permission from company management.
Wednesday’s news closely followed the discovery on Sept. 27 of a separate partial ceiling collapse near Panel 4: another disposal area that has been sealed up for years, and to which access was heavily restricted for safety reasons.
The local Carlsbad Current-Argus newspaper first reported the Panel 4 collapse.
A deep underground salt mine, WIPP’s walls and ceilings naturally shift and must be periodically reinforced. Partial collapses are not unheard of in the underground, though the frequency of the last two draws into even sharper relief the issue of mine stability — what DOE and NWP call “ground control.”
The agency and its contractor have scheduled a town hall meeting for Oct. 13 in Carlsbad to discuss the issue and take questions from the local workforce and citizenry.
