The Santa Fe-based Southwest Research and Information Center, a frequent critic of the Department of Energy’s operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, has appealed an Oct. 27 ruling by the New Mexico Environment Department authorizing completion of a new underground utility shaft at the transuranic waste disposal facility.
Southwest Research Information Center (SRIC) attorney Lindsay Lovejoy filed the appeal Monday with the New Mexico Court of Appeals on behalf of the citizens group.
In the 34-page filing, SRIC also seeks a stay blocking further excavation of the 2,100-foot deep shaft No. 5. approved by James Kenney, secretary of the New Mexico Department of Environment (NMED). Parties, including Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety among others, have until Nov. 27 to appeal the ruling.
The request for the stay was filed with the secretary of environment Kenney’s office. NMED can approve, deny, or take no action on the stay, according to Don Hancock, director of nuclear waste safety at Southwest Research. If NMED takes no action within 60 days the plaintiffs can ask the state Court of Appeals for a stay.
SRIC maintains the recent ruling, based upon a report by Administrative Law Judge Gregory Chakalian, has “no discussion of the evidence of DOE’s plans to expand the WIPP disposal facility, which are the plain purpose” of the class 3 permit modification. The shaft is part of DOE plans to set up a “Forever WIPP” to handle new sources of defense-related transuranic waste, including waste generated through increased production of plutonium pits by the National Nuclear Security Administration, SRIC maintains.
Southwest Research also said a stay is necessary because DOE expects to complete the shaft and drifts project within 30 months of permission to commence construction. The group included an affidavit from a former WIPP permit official for the state, Steve Zappe. “Upon completion of construction the case would become effectively moot,” the SRIC said in its brief.
For example, SRIC said that it and other advocacy groups challenged the state’s “volume of record,” the DOE’s new system for counting underground waste volume, shortly after NMED issued its final order on Dec. 21, 2018. That case “is still pending on appeal in the Court of Appeals, with no date for argument, more than 34 months after the final order.”
Southwest Research and other groups have said that the shaft’s major purpose will be to allow DOE to continue operating the underground waste disposal site beyond the mid-century.
DOE and prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership say the utility shaft would work in tandem with the new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, due to open in 2025, and allow enough underground airflow to support simultaneous maintenance, salt mining and waste emplacement.
In August 2019, a $75-million subcontract was awarded to Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers to build the utility shaft. Workers began digging the shaft in April 2020 under a temporary work authorization but NMED halted the project in November 2020 citing both expiration of the six-month authorization and a recent spike in local COVID cases at the time.
