Called the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS), the new facility includes two primary buildings: the Salt Reduction Building, which prefilters salt-laden air coming from the underground repository, and the New Filter Building, which houses fans and HEPA filtration to further clean the air.
Increased airflow: Along with a new utility shaft, the SSCVS is one of two major capital projects being conducted at WIPP intended to increase airflow to the underground, allowing full waste emplacement, mining, and maintenance operations to resume. WIPP’s ventilation capacity was reduced following the 2014 underground fire and unrelated radiological release.
“This is a big step in getting the SSCVS fully operational and providing additional airflow to the WIPP underground,” said Mark Bollinger, DOE-EM Carlsbad Field Office manager. “This project is important in increasing our workers’ safety while allowing us to continue DOE’s critical environmental cleanup and national security mission.”
The SSCVS will work in tandem with the new utility shaft, which provides a new entry point for air into the WIPP underground. The SSCVS will pull air through the repository, remove salt when required, and send the air through HEPA filtration units before it is released to the environment. The new ventilation system will increase underground airflow from 170,000 cubic feet per minute up to a maximum of 540,000 cubic feet per minute.
The work: WIPP management and operations contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors began commissioning activities last fall after completing construction of the facility in June 2024. Commissioning involved testing each system individually and then the SSCVS as a whole to demonstrate complete functionality.
Following the commissioning phase, team members turned the SSCVS over to the operations team members so they could gain proficiency in running the highly efficient system.
Work on the SSCVS began in May 2018 and, at the time, was projected to be completed by November 2022 at a total project cost of $288 million. In August 2020, however, WIPP terminated its contract with Critical Applications Alliance due to poor performance. In 2021, Nuclear Waste Partnership, then the WIPP M&O contractor, announced the award of a $163 million contract to The Industrial Company to complete the project.
According to a 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO-24-106716), as of April of last year, the total cost of the SSCVS project is $494 million, with a completion date of June 2026.
DOE-EM, however, expects the SSCVS to be fully operational and on line this year following assessments and reviews intended to demonstrate that all primary and backup systems are functional and operating as expected, and that operators are proficient and fully understand the ventilation system.
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