Top federal and contractor managers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico said Thursday they still hope to beat a 2026 date for operation of a new underground ventilation project criticized recently by the Government Accountability Office.

There will be no additional public written report issued on corrective actions being taken at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) to address the increased cost and delayed schedule for the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS), Reinhard Knerr, DOE’s manager of the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico said in an online WIPP Community Forum Thursday evening.

“It could be as early as sometime in 2024 … [but] we feel highly confident it won’t be any later than 2026,” Knerr said. Progress on the ventilation center, designed to nearly triple underground airflow to about 540,000 cubic feet per minute, has gone well in the past year, Knerr said. 

In a report published last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) forecast a schedule for the ventilation system that included assumptions about “contingencies” going wrong, Knerr said. But if WIPP avoids some of the pitfalls GAO baked into its estimate, the SSCVS could be finished before 2026, said Knerr. 

Knerr spoke in response to a question from environmentalist Don Hancock, administrator for the nuclear waste program of the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center. 

Hancock cited the GAO report, which said that since 2018, DOE’s timeline for completing the SSCVS increased by three years and the cost has escalated by more than $200 million. Early problems prompted prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) to replace the initial ventilation project subcontractor with The Industrial Co., a Kiewit company.

Escalating costs are affected by everything from supply chain problems to rising prices on essential commodities such as concrete and steel, said Sean Dunagan, president of Nuclear Waste Partnership.

Dunagan, in his presentation to the online forum, said that WIPP has started disposing of waste in Room 1 of Panel 7, which is the last room in the panel that suffered contamination from a 2014 underground radiation leak. Moving to Panel 8 from Panel 7 in a few months will mean workers can reduce the amount of personal protective equipment they wear underground, the Dunagan said.