The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., has resumed emplacement of transuranic waste that was suspended after detection of a misaligned drum on May 24.
A recovery plan to fix the leaning drum within a seven-pack canister was approved May 29, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Wednesday in a social media release. Normal work resumed last Saturday, Shrader said.
Workers disassembled the canister of waste drums and then rebuilt it before disposing of the waste in Room 5 of WIPP’s underground Panel 7 last week.
“We put together a really good recovery plan and our employees executed it perfectly with safety as their number 1 goal,” said Tammy Reynolds, chief operating officer and deputy project manager for WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, said in the same news release.
In a subsequent email, NWP spokesman Donavan Mager explained the drum problem this way: “At the waste generator site, seven packs of 55-gallon waste drums are wrapped with a heavy plastic material (similar to shrink wrapping) to hold the drums together. It appears one of the drums became dislodged during normal underground waste processing operations.”
Waste handlers took apart the seven pack and then reassembled it before disposal, Mager said. Additional details were not immediately available Thursday on the restart. Nuclear Waste Partnership has not yet said at which DOE site the canister originated..
Between Jan. 1 and May 22, which is the most recent date for which public data is available, WIPP received 129 shipments of TRU waste.
Employees at the salt mine were evacuated after discovery of the misaligned drum late on May 24. The Energy Department and the contractor have said no canisters were damaged and there was no sign of a radioactive release as a result of the incident.
Power Line Move Underway for Ventilation System
The power company that serves WIPP has started moving an overhead electric transmission line to make way for new structures to be built on the surface for the site’s planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System.
Xcel Energy has already installed most of the power poles for the relocated line and the project should be completed by July 9, Mager said this week by email.
Site clearing and grading are set to begin next week for new structures on the surface, including a new 55,000 square-foot filter building, a salt reduction building, fabrication facility, and stormwater equipment. The facilities are part of the ventilation capital project.
More than half of the construction budget for the ventilation project is included in DOE’s fiscal 2018 and 2019 spending plans. The project was funded at $86 million in the fiscal 2018 budget.
The House and Senate Appropriations committees have both endorsed DOE’s $84 million request for fiscal 2019 for work on the ventilation system, as has the Senate and House in their latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) versions. All parties are also in agreement on providing $397 million in total spending for WIPP in the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The new ventilation system would enable WIPP to simultaneously conduct full-scale underground salt mining and disposal of transuranic waste. The new setup is meant to provide underground airflow of about 540,000 cubic feet per minute, or more than three times current levels.
Airflow was significantly cut to prevent the spread of contaminants following a February 2014 underground radiation release. After being out of service for about three years, WIPP resumed waste disposal operations in January 2017, and it started taking outside shipments again in April 2017. Mining resumed in January of this year.
