An advocacy group has asked the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to hold public meetings soon on the Energy Department’s plan to build a new underground multi-use shaft into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
In an April 15 letter to NMED, Southwest Research and Information Center Administrator Don Hancock said the state needs to hold public meetings as it considers a December 2017 modification to DOE’s hazardous waste permit allowing construction of the complex shaft project.
The state agency has not yet responded to the SRIC letter, Hancock said Friday.
Hancock said Monday that NMED made no decision in 2018 on the matter while it focused on considering approval of a change to calculating how waste volume should be calculated in the WIPP underground. In December the then-NMED secretary signed off on a change that allowed the Energy Department to count only the amount of actual waste stored – rather than the volume of the outermost container. The decision has been appealed.
The Energy Department’s prime contractor for WIPP, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), issued a sources-sought notice in October 2018 seeking a subcontractor to sink the new utility shaft about 2,200 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter. The contractor hopes construction can start in July of this year and be finished around August 2022 at the transuranic waste disposal site.
In January, the NMED Hazardous Waste Bureau sought additional information from DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader and NWP President and Project Manager Bruce Covert on the shaft. The state said it must determine what level of public review the proposal should undergo.
In a March reply, the Energy Department and its contractor said, among other things, the new shaft would help be a part of the ongoing ventilation upgrade project at the WIPP underground. The additional shaft would help preserve underground airflow quality by connecting with new equipment on the surface that can adjust the intake fan and exhaust fan flow. This tweak accommodates for changes in surface temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity.
The multipurpose shaft would provide a second point of access for moving workers and materials into the WIPP mine, NWP spokesman Donavan Mager said by telephone Monday. This second access point would be important as new waste-storage rooms and panels are gradually added to the underground footprint, he added.
The new shaft, No. 5, will be located nominally 1,200 feet west of the air intake shaft and will provide most of the intake air to the repository, according to the modification request.
Post-Accident WIPP Recertification Took Over Three Years, EPA Says
Plans for the new shaft are among a wide gamut of issues the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will consider in evaluating a five-year recertification of WIPP.
The last recertification lasted more than three years.
The protracted review followed the February 2014 underground radiological accident at the site, according to April 16 slide presentation by EPA supervisory environmental scientist Thomas Peake to the National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board in Washington, D.C.
The Energy Department submitted its recertification application to the EPA in March 2014, only weeks after a vehicle fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release at WIPP. The application only included performance data through the end of 2012, Peake said.
The agency formally recertified WIPP in a July 2017 Federal Register notice.
Between 2014 and 2016, roughly the period in which the facility was offline. the EPA and the Energy Department exchanged many letters and held many technical discussions, Peake said. The Environmental Protection Agency also held a public meeting in New Mexico as part of its research.
The Energy Department filed its latest five-year recertification application in late March. This document does address the changes it made, and plans to make, following the accident.
Under the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act, EPA must determine every five years if the facility continues to adhere to federal radioactive waste disposal regulations. Should EPA refuse to recertify it could cause a halt to waste emplacement.
