A planned maintenance outage starting in mid-February at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will efficiently consolidate multiple projects.
Office of Environmental Management
January 28, 2020
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CARLSBAD, N.M. – A planned maintenance outage starting in mid-February at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will efficiently consolidate multiple projects at the nation’s only underground transuranic waste repository.
The annual outage, scheduled to start Feb. 17, includes maintenance projects that would normally interrupt WIPP operations because they take multiple days to complete, or are in critical areas that would block other operations.
“The annual maintenance outage showcases the skills of our employees and demonstrates how efficiently maintenance can be done when it is well planned and time is properly allocated,” said Mark Pearcy, chief operating officer and site manager for Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates WIPP for EM.
Shipments of defense-generated transuranic waste for disposal at WIPP will be put on hold during the outage.
One of the largest items on the to-do list is replacing one of six head ropes on the facility’s 45-ton capacity waste hoist — a four-day effort. The 2,200-foot steel rope, made up of 151 wires, connects the top of the hoist’s cage with a 51-ton counterweight.
Also scheduled is electrical work on power substations, and an electrical tie-in for the new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System. Critical to EM’s plans to increase shipments of transuranic waste to WIPP from cleanup sites across the DOE complex, this system is set to increase the airflow of the underground portion of the WIPP facility from 160,000 cubic feet per minute to 540,000 cubic feet per minute. As a result, EM will be able to perform transuranic waste emplacement activities simultaneously with facility mining and maintenance operations.
Two sets of giant airlock doors will also be transported underground and reinstalled. During the final week of the outage, power to the WIPP facility will be turned off to accommodate electrical work, and all but essential employees will attend training at a conference center in Carlsbad.