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When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations. The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department’s credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste. But the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according...

Gannett Company - Link only

Cause of New Mexico nuclear waste accident remains a mystery "A 55-gallon drum of nuclear waste, buried in a salt shaft 2,150 feet under the New Mexico desert, violently erupted late on Feb. 14 and spewed mounds of radioactive white foam. The flowing mass, looking like whipped cream but laced with plutonium, went airborne, traveled up a ventilation duct to the surface and delivered low-level radiation doses to 21 workers. … The investigators are looking at a variety of materials that may have been added to the drum, including lead, tungsten, acid and even kitty litter as possible factors in...

A 55-gallon drum of nuclear waste, buried in a salt shaft 2,150 feet under the New Mexico desert, violently erupted late on Feb. 14 and spewed mounds of radioactive white foam. The flowing mass, looking like whipped cream but laced with plutonium, went airborne, traveled up a ventilation duct to the surface and delivered low-level radiation doses to 21 workers. The accident contaminated the nation's only dump for nuclear weapons waste — previously a focus of pride for the Energy Department — and gave the nation's elite ranks of nuclear chemists a mystery they still cannot unravel. Six months after...

Los Alamos National Laboratory packed 57 barrels of nuclear waste with a type of kitty litter believed to have caused a radiation leak at the federal government's troubled nuclear waste dump, posing a potentially "imminent" and "substantial" threat to public health and the environment, New Mexico officials said Monday. State Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn issued a formal order giving the lab two days to submit a plan for securing the waste containers, many of which are likely stored outdoors on the lab's northern New Mexico campus or at temporary site in west Texas.

he Department of Energy said Thursday it expects to get underground next week to begin investigating the cause and extent of a mysterious radiation leak from the government's nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico. Officials said the inspections of the shafts that workers will use to access the half-mile-deep repository are complete and they are preparing to send an initial crew of eight into the mine early next week. The dump has been shuttered since mid-February, when radiation was released above ground and into the air around Carlsbad, contaminating at least 17 workers with low doses of radiation. Four...

I just sent an email to someone outlining some 'odd things' about the WIPP 'radiological event'. Most following it know the best sources (perhaps a bit fringe, but detail-oriented nevertheless) are:https://www.radcast.org/updates-on-wipp/ and http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/ I'm avoiding speculation on radiation releases (for those that want to piss on my 'histrionics'), just noting some really large discrepancies in what's been released to-date, as it's a template for future radiological events. Here is the base content of the email: Sorry for the length. No way to condense this further as I have my own analysis below not really elaborated in the linked blogs. First,...

Normal operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have been suspended for four days as the leak is investigated. ... the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, activated air filters as a precaution and barred personnel from entering the 2,150-foot-deep repository as they investigate what caused the leak. Radiation sensors sounded alarms at 11:30 p.m. Friday, when no workers were in the underground portions of the plant. ... Any prolonged shutdown could cause a backup of waste at a dozen nuclear-weapons-related sites across the nation, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area. In 2012, those dozen sites made...

“One event is far too many.” That’s how New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn characterized last week’s radiation leak from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Although deemed not harmful to human health, the elevated levels of plutonium and americium detected outside the nuclear waste depository has prompted an investigation. U.S. Department of Energy Carlsbad Field Office Manager Joe Franco said it could take three weeks to get investigators underground to uncover the source of the Feb. 14 leak – the first time radiation has escaped the facility in its 15 years of operation, he said. Franco said WIPP...

Arrogant, abusive, volatile and arbitrary in his use of authority... The chairman of the NRC has been excoriated by scientists who have seen years of research, discarded as Jaczko... terminated the national nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He has been castigated by congressmen who support a rational system for nuclear waste disposal -- as mandated by Congress and four previous administrations. The NRC inspector general concluded that Mr. Jaczko has manipulated policy by withholding information from his fellow commissioners.

CARLSBAD, NM - Dr. Dorothee Mûhl, deputy director general manager of Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, visited WIPP, the U.S. Department of Energy's underground repository for disposal of defense-generated transuranic waste… The United States and Germany are the only two countries that are currently actively pursuing the use of rock salt for radioactive waste disposal, We are actively seeking to establish a "Salt Club" By exchanging knowledge gained from our separate activities studying salt, both sides leverage their considerable "scientific assets". You are ahead of us in the field of public acceptance, adding, the German government could learn...

This photo provided by Jack Griffith, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, shows Waste Isolation Pilot Plant staff member Sam Dominguez using a core drill to extract salt crystal samples from a salt wall at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. in December 2006. Griffith and his team found cellulose dating back 253 million years _ along with some possible ancient DNA _ in salt crystals from the underground nuclear waste dump. The crystals were taken from newly mined areas 2,000 feet below WIPP's desert surface last fall...

Thursday, August 14, 2003 Waste Headed to WIPP Ignites By John FleckJournal Staff Writer     A drum of radioactive waste destined for New Mexico caught fire in an Idaho laboratory Wednesday morning because of an unknown chemical inside, officials said.     The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Facility at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory was evacuated for several hours after the drum caught fire, said lab spokeswoman Ann Riedesel.     No radiation escaped and no workers were injured, she said.     Workers were preparing the drum for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico when the...