NWP Eyes Quick Ramp-Up for WIPP Throughput

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., will be able to store about five shipments of transuranic waste a month after it reopens to new shipments later this year, but the prime contractor at the underground Energy Department facility said here that number could quickly double.

“We hope to get it up to 10, in that range, within first couple of years” after reopening, Phil Breidenbach, president and project manager for Nuclear Waste Partnership, said Monday afternoon in a panel discussion at the 2016 Waste Management Conference.

There are several chokepoints for WIPP throughput, the main one being underground ventilation. Moving bulky waste containers — which arrive by the truckload — requires using diesel-powered equipment. The amount of diesel equipment operating underground has been sharply reduced from intended levels since 2014, when air circulation levels in the mine fell precipitously after an underground fire and unrelated radiation release. After the accident, DOE clamped down on air circulation to curtail the spread of radioactivity.

Just getting WIPP in shape to accept five shipments a week requires installing an “interim ventilation system,” which will bump air circulation up to just over 110 cubic feet a minute from the current 60 cubic feet per minute. The interim ventilation system has been installed and should come online in April, Sean Dunagan, acting deputy and recovery manager for DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said during the Monday panel.

DOE officials from Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on down say WIPP is still on track to reopen in mid-December, although Dunagan said Monday the agency is trying to restart operations at the facility even earlier by working to an internal schedule that is more aggressive than the public schedule the agency released in mid-February.

Breidenbach said increasing the number of waste shipments stored per week should be possible even with just the new interim ventilation system. However, returning to pre-accident throughput levels of about 17 shipments per week will require DOE to install an expansive new permanent ventilation system, which is expected to cost between $270 million and $400 million, Dunagan said. The permanent system would not come online until 2021, at the earliest, he added.

There is a tremendous backlog of transuranic waste across the DOE weapons complex. At the Idaho National Laboratory alone, more than 19,000 waste containers await shipment to WIPP, James Malmo, assistant manager for Idaho National Laboratory waste disposition, said during the Monday panel.