The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is the nation's only geological radioactive waste storage facility.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository (after closure of Germany's Repository for radioactive waste Morsleben and the Schacht Asse II Salt Mine) licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years[1] that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons.
It is located approximately 26 miles (42 km) east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in eastern Eddy County, in an area known as the southeastern New Mexico nuclear corridor which also includes the National Enrichment Facility near Eunice, New Mexico, the Waste Control Specialists low-level waste disposal facility just over the border near Andrews, Texas, and the International Isotopes, Inc. facility to be built near Eunice, New Mexico
For now, this is just something to watch. Yesterday there was a radiation alarm underground. Fortunately, there were no workers underground at that time. While there have been false alarms in the past, this looks like a real thing according to Department of Energy spokesman
Roger Nelson.
"They (air monitors) have alarmed in the past as a false positive because of malfunctions, or because of fluctuations in levels of radon (a naturally occurring radioactive gas)," Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson said.
"But I believe it's safe to say we've never seen a level like we are seeing. We just don't know if it's a real event, but it looks like one," he said.
More across the break.
The news reports I've seen state that only low level waste is stored at WIPP. That isn't true. Although that was the design and the site is limited by law to low level waste, WIPP is an example of deregulation though defunding.
The New Mexico Environment Department office at WIPP was closed in 1996 due to a loss of federal funding. It was reopened in 2004 after it came to light that high level waste from Hanford found it's way to the site.
http://ens-newswire.com/...
Documents obtained by the "Albuquerque Journal" and reported Tuesday show that the DOE shipped at least 602 drums of plutonium waste to New Mexico in violation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules.
The shipments to WIPP from the DOE's Hanford nuclear site violated an August 2003 EPA directive that said the waste should not be shipped because of questions about whether it had been properly tested. It is the second similar incident this year and the fourth since WIPP opened in 1999.