The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant team looked back at a successful year with the release of a 2024 year in review video.
Office of Environmental Management
January 14, 2025
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CARLSBAD, N.M. — The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) team looked back at a successful year with the release of a 2024 year in review video this week.
Likewise, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management site’s annual planned maintenance outage is underway and is expected to run through mid-March. No transuranic waste shipments from generator sites to WIPP are scheduled during the maintenance period. Salado Isolation Mining Contractors (SIMCO), WIPP’s management and operations contractor, leads the maintenance team.
WIPP, the nation’s only repository for defense-related transuranic waste, receives waste left from research and production of nuclear weapons and emplaces those materials in underground rooms mined out of an ancient salt formation.
“Keeping our WIPP infrastructure well maintained, available and ready to go is so important to our day-to-day operations,” said Mindy Toothman, director of Site Operations and Infrastructure for EM’s Carlsbad Field Office. “Some of our vital infrastructure is more than 30 years old, and planned annual maintenance outages combined with new infrastructure investments are vital to serving DOE’s defense and cleanup missions.”
During a previous annual maintenance outage at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, workers safely performed a head rope replacement at the site’s waste hoist building where transuranic waste shipments are lowered into the underground repository.
During the planned outage, several upgrade and installation projects are scheduled. Crews will install the final section of duct work to connect the new aboveground Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System to the underground repository. Workers will also continue refurbishing a key piece of infrastructure more than 2,100 feet underground known as the “salt pocket.”
Maintenance activities include inspecting the contact-handled waste bay dock, replacing the waist hoist head rope and motor, inspecting ventilation and fan systems, and performing maintenance for electrical substations and systems. There will also be continued mining upkeep of an underground drift, or passageway, used as the main haul route for waste emplacement, as well as inspections of underground bulkheads. Bulkheads are used to control airflow through air circuits in the facility’s underground.
“In addition to the new infrastructure, much of our work will focus on conducting inspections, performing maintenance, and making any necessary repairs and replacements on existing equipment, systems, and portions of the underground mine so they remain safe and ready to support waste emplacement operations,” said Mike Marksberry, a SIMCO vice president and mining and underground operations manager.
-Contributor: Roy Neese
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