Opening delayed for nuclear waste site.

Opening delayed for nuclear waste site

Regulatory problems and safety questions forced the Energy Department to postpone its planned October opening of the $700 million facility for storing nuclear waste underneath the New Mexico desert, federal officials told a House subcommittee last week. Even evaluators within the Energy Department have joined the criticism of the agency's safety analyses, according to internal memos made public at the hearing.

Called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the facility contains 56 rooms carved out of salt deposits located 2,100 feet below ground near Carlsbad, N.M. It is designed to store wastes from the Defense Department's nuclear weapons program that are contaminated with radioactive transuranic elements.

The Energy Department has yet to demonstrate that the facility will meet Environmental Protection Agency standards for storing nuclear waste. It had planned to start placing waste in the facility next month as part of a five-year-long series of tests designed to demonstrate compliance with the standards. Last month, however, the department announced it would not meet its schedule, and it has offered no revised date for opening WIPP, according to Richard Marquez, Energy Department spokesman in Albuquerque, N.M.

Earlier this year, the department scaled down the amount of waste it planned to use for the test project (SN: 3/19/88, p.188). Prior to that decision, water leaking into the facility led a New Mexico state scientific advisory committee to criticize the department's plans for the testing period (SN: 1/23/88, p.54).

Several major impediments stand in the way of opening WIPP:

* The Energy Department must finish testing the canisters that hold the waste as it is transported to the WIPP facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must then certify the canisters.

* The Energy Department has pledged to publish a complete plan outlining the tests it will perform during the next five years to demonstrate compliance with EPA standards. An earlier, unpublished draft of the plan was not acceptable, says Lokesh Chaturvedi of the Environmental Evaluation Group, the New Mexico committee overseeing WIPP.

* The Energy Department must publish a Final Safety Analysis Report to be reviewed by its own safety board and by the Environmental Evaluation Group. At the hearing, Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.) released internal Energy Department memos that criticized a preliminary version of the report, saying it failed to convince evaluators the plant was safe to operate.