Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Accident at NM Nuclear Site Points to Cost of Lapses
Earlier this year, a violent chemical reaction at a New Mexico facility that stores waste from the making of plutonium bombs broke open a storage drum and sprayed the waste into the air, leading to the closure of the repository.
Fortunately, the incident on Feb. 4 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N.M., happened at night when operations were limited; no workers were injured beyond a very small radiation exposure, and only a very small amount of radioactive waste leaked into the environment.
But the reaction, which forced the closure of the site, came as a blow to the country’s efforts to clean up old nuclear weapons manufacturing sites and has forced the government to take extraordinary measures to prevent a repetition. The reopening of the waste repository will stretch into next year and cost at least $551 million, according to the Energy Department.
The price could jump even higher. The State of New Mexico is nearing a decision on fining the Energy Department for its safety lapses at the repository — the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N.M. — and at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the plutonium waste was packaged in a way that ultimately led to the accident. The storage drum was one of many filled there as part of a cleanup campaign...more
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