A three-day New Mexico Environment Department hearing on the need for a new underground shaft for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant kicked off Monday with a lawyer for DOE saying the case is not about a life extension for the transuranic waste disposal site.
The hearing is about efforts to “restore a crippled ventilation system” that has slowed operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) “to a crawl,” said Michael Woodward the attorney for DOE and prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, in his opening remarks.
“Air to an underground mine is like blood to a body,” Woodward said. Without airflow to the work area 2,100 feet below the surface, WIPP cannot operate, he added.
The DOE and its contractor seek to modify the existing hazardous waste permit to add language allowing a new air intake shaft, also known as Shaft No. 5, Woodward said.
While increasing the amount of underground airflow is important, the ability to “direct and filter contaminated air”— mitigate the release of contaminated air to the surface and keep any bad air away from underground workers — is also vital, Woodward said.
Last November, the state refused to renew a temporary work authorization on sinking the new shaft in part because of the high number of COVID-19 cases at WIPP during that time.
Critics of the new utility shaft, No. 5, assert that DOE and its contractor will get many of the same air quality benefits from the planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System that, after a long wait and some false starts, is supposed to be ready at WIPP by 2025. That upgraded ventilation system is designed to provide about 540,000 cubic feet per minute to the underground, which is more than triple the current level. Last month, the prime hired a new subcontractor to replace the replacement subcontractor fired last summer.
Robert Kehrman, an engineer with more than 30 years of experience, said during testimony Monday that the new utility shaft will, working in tandem with the new ventilation system, enable WIPP to return to once again “multitask” by doing waste emplacement, maintenance and salt mining at the same time.
That is an ability the underground disposal site has lacked since a 2014 underground radiation leak led to a nearly three-year shutdown at the mine, Kehrman said.
While limited operations resumed in 2017, “limited is the key word,” Woodward said.
