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What Fire and Leakage At WIPP Means For Nuclear Waste Disposal

Posted by samzenpus on from the where-should-I-put-this? dept.

Lasrick (2629253) writes "An underground fire and a separate plutonium leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has left the US with no repository for transuranic (TRU) waste--that is, radioactive elements heavier than uranium on the periodic chart, such as plutonium, americium, curium and neptunium. WIPP is a bedded salt formation in New Mexico, chosen because of its presumed long-term stability and self-sealing properties, and it currently holds, among other things, 4.9 metric tons of plutonium. Despite assurances from the DOE that the plant would soon reopen, New Mexico has cancelled WIPP's disposal permit indefinitely. Robert Alvarez, who has served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary and as deputy assistant secretary for national security, explores what happened at WIPP, and what it means for defense nuclear waste storage."

3 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Oopsie! by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    [sigh] Yet another contractor who seems to have been doing the minimum required to get paid. Fire suppression turned off, flammable materieals stored after repeated inspections required that they be removed. Outsource responsibility and this seems to be the result. Words cannot express how disappointed I am that "business" seems to be going on "as usual" even when managing something as hazardous as nuclear waste.

    1. Re:Oopsie! by BitZtream · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We keep creating all this waste that we have no way to actually dispose of.

      Really? What waste is that? We can do all sorts of stuff to the waste we have to make it orders of magnitude safer ... AND get energy out of it in the process.

      But wackos freak out because OMFG SOMETHING MIGHT GO WRONG ... even when we put it in someplace that if something does go wrong ... its okay ... like this particular incident.

      There really isn't that much we can't reprocess, reuse and repeat until its not nearly as dangerous or there is a lot less of it.

      And lets not be retarded, this stuff came out of the ground in the first place. Putting it back isn't going to be what kills us all.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  2. Re:Shoot it to the sun? by tlambert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about we blend it with DU and 'burn' it in a reactor?

    Heretic!

    How dare you propose a solution which is both workable by examples in France and Japan, and fails to support the idea that wind and solar can provide all the power we need (ignore the Solyndra behind the curtain)?!?!?!

    I'm pretty sure we burned Joan of Arc at the stake for less than that!