I just posted another update a few days ago about the situation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. They believe that they now understand what caused the release of plutonium and americium into the environment in February. A new type of absorbent was added to drums of waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This absorbent did not adequately lock up the ammonium nitrates in the liquid in the drums. The dried nitrate salts that resulted were unstable and caused one of the drums at Carlsbad to explode.
It was known at that time that there were at least two of the drums with the wrong absorbent at WIPP. After studying the drums brought to WIPP for storage from LANL it turns out that there are at about three hundred and seventy of the problem drums now at the WIPP. The operators have been ordered to immediately draw up plans to permanently seal off the rooms at the WIPP where the problem drums are stored before any more of them explode.
In my recent post, I mentioned that there were at least fifty seven of the problem drums with the new absorbent still at LANL. There are plans to move the drums under the cover of a dome to prevent radioactive release if they explode. The drums will be monitored constantly for any increase in their temperature.
When WIPP was shut down after the radiation release in February, drums of waste from LANL were shipped to a temporary storage site in Texas. The site is operated by Waste Control Specialists on the Texas - New Mexico border. The waste is stored in an air-conditioned building and monitored twenty four hours a day. Now it turns out that there are over a hundred of the problem drums from LANL at the Texas site. The drums are wrapped in clusters of seven and then placed in containers. If any explosions occur in those drums, it might result in the release of radioactive materials into the environment.
What began as an accidental release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere with unknown cause in February has now escalated into a full-blown crisis with over five hundred drums of unstable and potentially explosive nuclear waste in the LANL, the WIPP and the Texas sites. All of this as a result of the change of an absorbent added to the drums. Someone should have been responsible for determining that the new absorbent would perform the main function that it was intended for.
The nuclear industry spends a lot of money assuring the public that nuclear power is safe. They say that the Fukushima disaster was a case of old technology, poor planning and natural disaster. They assure us that new reactors will be much safer and reliable. Unfortunately, as the accident at the WIPP illustrates, there problems that arise because someone changes something in the nuclear fuel cycle without fully testing what they have changed. And here we are with another nuclear crisis.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
