CEAC-2021-07-July

News
New Mexico Weighs Changes to Permit
for Nuclear Waste Dump
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) — U.S. officials are pushing state
regulators to clear the way for a new ventilation shaft to be
built at the federal government’s nuclear waste repository
in southern New Mexico, but watchdog groups say modifying
the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s permit to allow for the
construction could open the door to expansion.
The state Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau
recently held a virtual hearing to gather comments on
the proposed permit change. A final decision is anticipated
in mid-October.
Ventilation has been an issue since 2014, when a radiation
release contaminated parts of the underground facility and
forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the
federal government’s cleanup program and prompted policy
changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites
across the U.S.
Officials with the U.S. Energy Department have said the new
shaft is needed to repair a “crippled” ventilation system, the
Carlsbad Current-Argus newspaper reported.
With more airflow, officials argue that more workers can
be in the underground space working on mining and waste
operations simultaneously.
“Air to an underground mine is like blood to body,” said
Michael Woodward, counsel for the Energy Department
and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that runs the
facility. “Without sufficient airflow, an underground mine
simply cannot operate. There must be sufficient air to allow
multitasking in the underground.”
Woodward said at the hearing that the utility shaft was not
intended to expand the repository. He said the amount of
waste to be entombed there was established by Congress
and only Congress could expand the plant’s mission.
Robert Kehrman, a retired geoscientist and consultant at the
repository, testified about the need for the shaft to allow
multiple operations to be done in tandem.
The proposal is supported by leaders from the nearby city of
Carlsbad, where many of the plant’s employees live.
Chad Ingram, executive director of the Carlsbad Chamber of
Commerce, said the repository for decades provided jobs and
support to the community and that he believed the proposed
shaft project was developed with worker safety in mind.
The idled Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only underground nuclear
waste repository, near Carlsbad, N.M. U.S. officials are pushing state
regulators to clear the way for a new ventilation shaft to be built at the site
in southern New Mexico, but watchdog groups say modifying the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant’s permit to allow for the construction could open the
door to expansion. The state Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste
Bureau recently held a virtual hearing to gather comments on the proposed
permit change. A final decision is anticipated in mid-October. (AP Photo/
Susan Montoya Bryan, File)
Cynthia Weehler, a Santa Fe resident and representative of
activist group Stop Forever WIPP, argued that the utility shaft
was indicative of the Energy Department gradually expanding
the repository using individual projects rather than
proposing the overall goal of altering the facility’s mission to
extend its lifetime.
She said that if New Mexico approves the permit, it would
seem to be “colluding” with the Energy Department “to
relabel a new mission and a future expansion.”
“It will lead us to an operation we didn’t consent to,” Weehler
said.
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