Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz brushed off questions this week about consequences for contractors for managers who might have been at fault in a disruptive radiological release that closed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant earlier this year. A preliminary accident investigation by DOE in April found numerous deficiencies and errors in the safety documents and emergency infrastructure, procedures and responses, along with ineffective oversight by the DOE field office, which was under the supervision of DOE headquarters. The plant, according to Moniz’s current estimate, may remain closed until early 2016, depending on political circumstances and what the secretary warned are inevitable bumps in the road.
Moniz visited WIPP this week, becoming the first Energy Secretary to do so in the 15 years since it opened. During a brief press conference Aug. 12, he was asked about potential repercussions and changes in the department and the field as a result of the incident. “The management contractor has had a significant management change,” he noted, referring to Bob McQuinn, who was named to the top job in March at URS-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, the consortium that runs WIPP.
Additionally, Moniz pointed to hazardous waste violations that Los Alamos National Laboratory has formally acknowledged to the New Mexico Environment Department for using an unauthorized substance to absorb excess liquids in storage drums bound for WIPP. The “kitty litter,” according to one theory, may be a factor in the explosion that caused the radioactive release. “We the Department and the lab were the ones who self-reported that,” he said. “We’re going to be absolutely straightforward. We’re going to be factual, and we want to put everything out there.”
Although current efforts are focused on finding out what happened and how to get the problems fixed, Moniz has taken steps for a more thorough review that would look at the whole picture at the right time. “So it’s kind of like my investigative arm for big picture issues,” he said. “I will ask them to come in and do an independent assessment, not generate everything from the start, but do what you might call almost a peer review integration of everything and then we will decide if and what actions are to be done.”
