The Energy Department has decided not to levy any civil penalties on the contractors deemed responsible for a pair of accidents — including a radiation release — that have prevented the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., from accepting new shipments of nuclear waste for the past two years.
The decision came parceled with expected preliminary notices of violation of DOE nuclear safety requirements the agency and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration issued Friday to WIPP prime contactor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and to Los Alamos National Security — the prime contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where a barrel of irradiated waste that leaked underground at WIPP originated.
The department handed down the notices even as a DOE official told local and state stakeholders in Carlsbad the agency plans to reopen WIPP by Dec. 12, capping what will by that time be a recovery effort that costs more than $200 million.
Nuclear Waste Partnership is a joint venture of Bethesda, Md.-based URS Energy and Construction Inc., part of AECOM Co. of Los Angeles, and BWXT Technical Services Group, of Lynchburg, Va. AREVA North America, of Charlotte, N.C., is also on the project. Los Alamos National Security is a partnership led by San Francisco-based Bechtel National and the University of California.
In a Friday press release from agency headquarters in Washington, DOE said its contractors already paid a financial penalty for the 2014 accidents and so would not be subject to further penalties.
After the accidents, an underground fire and unrelated radiation release now widely attributed to faulty waste packaging by Los Alamos National Security, DOE withheld nearly all of the award fees Nuclear Waste Partnership and Los Alamos National Security could have earned under their respective prime contracts in 2014.
For Nuclear Waste Partnership, that amounted to a $7.6 million penalty for the company’s part in the accidents. In its notice of violation Feb. 19, DOE categorized both the fire and radiation release as “a near miss with respect to serious injury or fatality.” The agency dinged the company mostly for an inadequate emergency response program.
Los Alamos National Security paid a far heavier price. The company lost out on $57 million worth of fees in 2014, but far more significantly, was denied extensions to its LANL mission and operations contract that could have brought in some $4 billion of revenue. The deal will now lapse in 2017.
Spokespersons for Nuclear Waste Partnership and Los Alamos National Security had by deadline Friday not replied to emails requesting comment on the DOE notices.
Issuing the preliminary notices of violation to the two contractors “marks the completion of DOE’s investigations and enforcement process regarding two events in 2014 at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” the Energy Department wrote in its press release.
The contractors must reply to DOE’s notices, in writing, no later than 30 days after Feb. 19. If the companies wish to contest the notices, their reply should say so, and detail the grounds for contesting, according to the letters the agency sent to Los Alamos National Security Director Charles McMillan and Philip Breidenbach, president and project manager of Nuclear Waste Partnership.
Meanwhile, DOE is slowly lifting the veil on the performance measurement baseline document that details the schedule and cost of reopening WIPP to shipments of transuranic waste from across the DOE weapons complex.
The entire document, published internally in December and approved in January, still is not public. However, DOE unveiled parts of it in a public presentation Friday in Carlsbad. Among those scheduled to attend, according to a DOE spokesman, were Phil Breidenbach, president and project manager for Nuclear Waste Partnership, and Todd Shrader, manager of the department’s Carlsbad Field Office.
The WIPP recovery is projected to cost about $244 million over three years, according to DOE slides dated Feb. 19 and labeled “WIPP Integrated Performance Measurement Baseline Workshop.” The total includes $15.7 million of spending in 2017 proposed Feb. 9 in the White House’s 2017 budget request. Congress must approve that request.
Overall, DOE has spent roughly $1.4 billion on WIPP since 2013, the year before the accident, according to the slides from the meeting. DOE offered no remote access to the Friday meeting but does plan to webcast a WIPP town hall slated for April 7. The agency has said it will share more of its thinking about the WIPP restart then.
