Danger Zone: Major Nuclear Waste Dump Continues to Emit Dangerous Levels of Radiation

[madokie]

What happened is still a mystery after an accident near the surface site of a New Mexico nuclear waste storage facility in February.


Something happened in February, something is STILL going on

Environmental radiation releases spiked again in mid-June around the surface site of the only U.S. underground, nuclear weapons waste storage facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project ( WIPP), has been shut down since February 14, when its isolation technology failed, releasing unsafe levels of Plutonium, Americium, and other radio-nuclides into the environment around the site.

Radiation levels in the underground storage area, 2,150 feet below the surface vary from near-normal to potentially lethal. At the time of the February accident, more than 20 WIPP workers suffered low level radioactive contamination, even though none of them were underground. WIPP assumes, but cannot confirm, that underground conditions have not changed since May 31, when the last entry team went into the mine, as reported by WIPP field manager Jose Franco on June 5:

As I noted in my previous letter, we have identified the damaged drum believed to be a contributing source of the radiological release. On May 31, an entry team was able to safely and successfully collect six samples from a variety of locations in Panel 7 of Room 7, including from the breached drum and a nearby standard waste box. These sample results are consistent with the contamination previously identified.

In mid-March, WIPP suffered a surface radiation release almost twice the levels released in February. WIPP was designed to isolate highly radioactive nuclear weapons waste from the environment for 10,000 years. It went 15 years before its first leak of radioactivity into the above ground environment.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/danger-zone-major-nuclear-waste-dump-continues-emit-dangerous-levels-radiation

[EEO]

1. The waste produced by nuclear energy is one of the primary reasons I do not see it as...

Last edited Mon Jul 14, 2014, 10:09 AM - Edit history (1)

... a viable alternative to the fossil fuel burning plants. Wind, solar, and tidal are the way.

[rickyhall]

5. Not?

[EEO]

7. Good catch. Critical word added.

[Overseas]

2. K&R.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. 15 years, ten thousand years, that's just quibbling over details. n/t

[jtuck004]

4. This won't be news for 4.6 billion years or so, yes? 'Cause isn't that what they do till they give

off all their poison?

[malaise]

6. My paternal grandmother used to tell us to observe that a dog

never uses his own yard as his toilet unless he has no other option.
We humans make things to kill others and then bury them among ourselves. but never close to the 1%. Dogs are sophisticated when compared with us.