“A watchdog group criticized the Energy Department for choosing a subsidiary of Bechtel, a former partner in the consortium Los Alamos National Security LLC, which improperly packaged the waste drum that exploded at WIPP.”
“A private corporation that blew up WIPP operations in 2014 is now going to run WIPP?” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of the nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “Does the Department of Energy have no contractor accountability?”
The Santa Fe New Mexican | July 8, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
The U.S. Energy Department has awarded a $3 billion, 10-year contract to a Bechtel subsidiary to replace the current operator running the underground waste storage site in Carlsbad.
Tularosa Basin Range Services, based in Reston, Va., will take over daily operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant after Nuclear Waste Partnership’s contract expires Sept. 30.
Tularosa Basin, whose parent company is Chicago-based Bechtel National Inc., was among five bidders, and its proposal was “determined to be the best value to the government,” the Energy Department said in a statement.
The contract will go for four years, with six one-year extensions available after that.
The new operator will oversee disposal of transuranic waste — made up mostly of irradiated gloves, clothing, equipment, soil and other items — in salt caverns some 2,150 feet underground. This waste comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory and out-of-state sources such as the Hanford Site and Idaho National Laboratory.
The company also will be in charge of transporting waste, mining new caverns and completing various projects, such as adding sections or “panels” for burying waste and installing a new $486 million ventilation system.
WIPP officials have said the new ventilation system is needed because the old one was partially blocked to contain a 2014 radioactive release that occurred after a waste drum burst.
The incident shut down WIPP for three years, cost $2 billion to clean up and left two panels unusable. Two of the several panels proposed in the current permit renewal are to replace these lost panels, WIPP managers say.
A watchdog group criticized the Energy Department for choosing a subsidiary of Bechtel, a former partner in the consortium Los Alamos National Security LLC, which improperly packaged the waste drum that exploded at WIPP.
“A private corporation that blew up WIPP operations in 2014 is now going to run WIPP?” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of the nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “Does the Department of Energy have no contractor accountability?”
WIPP’s new primary contractor will take over amid continued controversies surrounding the repository.
WIPP has come under fire as it pushes to add new storage chambers and establish a more open-ended operation that will receive new and old waste until at least the 2080s. Activists contend this carries WIPP far beyond its original purpose of taking legacy waste until 2024.
The Energy Department also has stirred fierce opposition from watchdogs, the governor, lawmakers and some members of the public over plans to dilute surplus Cold War plutonium at Los Alamos lab and Savannah River Site and then dispose of it at WIPP.
The federal agency issued a notice of intent in the Federal Register in late 2020 but has said yet to discuss details of the dilute-and-dispose plan or the timeline.