Posted on 04/25/2011 11:16:32 AM PDT by CedarDave
The federal government, in search of a place to dispose of its radioactive waste, is once again considering New Mexico.
Three of seven sites under consideration for disposal of some of the lesser radioactive nuclear power plant waste are in New Mexico, including the possibility of adding it to the inventory of waste headed for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad.
A second site near WIPP is also on the list of possible locations, as well as Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The waste, much of it from machinery in old nuclear power plants, is technically categorized as "low level," but is sufficiently dangerous that federal rules call for burying it underground, explained Arnie Edelman, who is heading up a Department of Energy study of the issue.
It is less radioactive than the dangerous power plant fuel rods themselves, but more radioactive than much of the waste now being disposed of at WIPP, which is the final resting place for nuclear weapons manufacturing waste contaminated with radioactive plutonium.
Edelman and his colleagues have scheduled public hearings this week across the state to discuss the issue.
Don Hancock, head of the Nuclear Waste Safety Project at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, said singling out New Mexico as the possible host for three of the seven sites under consideration is a problem.
"That's not OK, and the people of New Mexico need to tell them it's not OK," Hancock said.
Much of the waste in question will come from decommissioned nuclear power plants, Edelman said, primarily in the form of metal exposed to high levels of radiation during reactor operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
• Carlsbad, Tuesday, Pecos River Village Conference Center, 5:30-9:30 p.m.
• Albuquerque, Wednesday, Marriott Pyramid North, 5151 San Francisco NE, 5:30-9:30 p.m.
• Pojoaque, Thursday, Cities of Gold Hotel Conference Center, 5:30-9:30 p.m.
The usual anti-nuclear types will no doubt be at all three meetings. I say agree with them about not having any more waste disposal at Los Alamos (disposal in variably cemented volcanic tuff several hundred feet above the Rio Grande river) instead support WIPP, located in a 2,150-foot-deep salt mine in southeast New Mexico. (Incidentally, this location is perfect as it is only several miles from one of two underground nuclear tests exploded in NM after the first above ground test at the Trinty site between Alamogordo and Socorro).
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Send it over to the lizards.
Beep! I’m an “anti-nuclear” type.
How about San Francisco?
It’s already a waste site.
Added bonus...it’ll soon be deep underground after the “big one”.
One can only hope that Nancy Botox is at home when it happens.
WIPP Site: it’s not located at the end of the world; but you can see it from there.
It’s sort of like that sand-dominated landscape in the first Star Wars movie.
technically categorized as “low level,” but is sufficiently dangerous that federal rules call for burying it underground,
Some of this stuff will be radioactive for centuries.
A few years ago they had a site about 5 miles from where I live in Illinois for, “Low level, hospital nuclear waste”. We raised such hell the county board canceled it. I guess the under the table money wasn’t enough. Actually fuel rods were clasified as “low level”, and hot for 25,000 years. (Not the spent fuel pellets.)
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Maybe New Mexico can get on the same gravy train that Nevada has been on for the last decade or so. This can be Yucca Mountain II.
***(Incidentally, this location is perfect as it is only several miles from one of two underground nuclear tests exploded in NM after the first above ground test at the Trinty site between Alamogordo and Socorro). ****
My dad worked on the Project Gnome. I still have his comic certificate showing he participated in the project.
When the blast went off, radioactive dust breached the doors and blew across a road there. In the Carlsbad Caverns a ranger noticed one drop of water fell into a pool at that time.
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