The Energy Department is due to conclude this week its final review of whether the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is ready to reopen for transuranic waste disposal nearly three years after a pair of accidents closed the deep-underground facility.
DOE on Nov. 14 began an operational readiness review that was expected to take about two weeks. WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and DOE’s local Carlsbad Field Office have billed the Washington-led review as a final exam for WIPP, which has been closed since February 2014 after an accidental underground radiation release and an earlier, unrelated, underground fire.
DOE does not have the final say on whether the site will reopen following the agency-led review slated to wrap up this week; the New Mexico Environment Department, WIPP’s state regulator, will have to give its blessing before mine operations may resume.
At the same time, the state Environment Department is reviewing hundreds of pages of documents that contain DOE’s plan for walling off parts of WIPP where walls and ceilings have become particularly prone to collapse after years of minimal or no maintenance. The agency and NWP submitted a revised permit modification request containing the closure plan to Santa Fe on Nov. 10, according to documents posted on DOE’s WIPP website.
Since late September, there have been four reported rockfalls at WIPP. No one was hurt in the incidents, which happened in areas of the mine that have been closed to personnel. DOE and NWP stopped doing regular maintenance in some parts of the underground following the radiation release in 2014.
WIPP’s naturally shifting salt walls and ceilings eventually will seal in all the nuclear waste disposed of in the mine. In the meantime, active disposal areas need periodic maintenance to stave off collapses.
