The Department of Energy weathered further negative attention over the weekend when a newspaper noted the agency awarded a performance bonus to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's contractor five days after a truck fire shut the repository down.
The Albuquerque Journal reported that Nuclear Waste Partnership received a $1.9 million award fee for performance deemed "excellent" in 2013. That fiscal year ended months before the February fire, which was followed by an unrelated radiation leak nine days later. Nonetheless, the bonus provided fodder for DOE critics who feel the contractor has not been sufficiently penalized for conditions that led to the incidents. The payment in question was part of a larger award structure that also paid NWP $5.9 million in 2013 for objective performance measures, like meeting waste disposal goals, on top of the $142 million appropriated to operate the facility.
A potential $8.2 million award fee in 2014 will be reduced by between roughly 12 percent and 25 percent, which the Journal reported has been the only penalty levied against NWP to date. An earlier fire investigation had faulted the contractor and the DOE for insufficient maintenance of the 29-year-old mining truck with a disabled fire suppression system. A separate investigation into a waste container that burst and released radioactive material is ongoing and has also focused on procedures at the national laboratories that packaged the material.