Nuclear-waste facility on high alert over risk of new explosions

[bananas]

http://www.nature.com/news/nuclear-waste-facility-on-high-alert-over-risk-of-new-explosions-1.15290

Nuclear-waste facility on high alert over risk of new explosions

US repository scrambles to seal off barrels containing cat-litter buffer thought to be responsible for February accident.

Declan Butler
27 May 2014

Time bombs may be ticking at the United States’ only deep geological repository for nuclear waste. US authorities concluded last week that at least 368 drums of waste at the site could be susceptible to the chemical reaction suspected to have caused a drum to rupture there in February. That accident caused radioactive material to spill into the repository and leak into the environment above ground.

<snip>

To mitigate the threat of further exploding drums, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) in Santa Fe issued an order on 20 May giving the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Waste Partnership — the contractor that operates the WIPP site — until 30 May to come up with a plan to “expedite” the sealing of panel 6 and part of panel 7.

<snip>

The WIPP has come under fire since the accident for progressively watering down safety standards and allowing a lax security culture to develop (see 'Call for better oversight of nuclear-waste storage').

<snip>

In addition to the drums at the WIPP, another 57 containing the suspect mix are still in temporary storage at the LANL. On 19 May, the NMED told the DOE and the LANL that they had two days to present a plan to secure the drums. In their response on 21 May, the LANL and the DOE said that the drums were being transferred to a tent fitted with fire-control and high-efficiency particulate air filtration to contain any radioactive particles in the event of an accident. They added that air radiation levels and the temperature of the drums were being monitored, and that the drums were being inspected hourly for signs of rupture.

<snip>

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15290

[yallerdawg]

1. Cat litter!

Wouldn't you know it?

[bananas]

3. Nature Editorial: An accident waiting to happen

http://www.nature.com/news/an-accident-waiting-to-happen-1.15214

Nature | Editorial

An accident waiting to happen

The release of radioactive material at a US nuclear-waste repository reveals an all-too-common picture of complacency over safety and a gradual downgrading of regulations.

13 May 2014 Corrected: 14 May 2014

On St Valentine’s Day, the United States’ flagship geological repository for nuclear waste dodged a bullet. Deep below the New Mexico desert, something went wrong. One or more drums of nuclear waste ruptured, probably because of a chemical reaction or explosion. Thousands of drums are held in the 655-metre deep underground repository, designed to safely contain for thousands of years the low- and medium-level radioactive remnants of US military programmes. Just 15 years after it opened, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad has been hurriedly closed down while officials seek answers.

Parts of the repository were contaminated with long-lived transuranic radioactive elements, including americium and plutonium. The extent of the contamination is still being established, but the amounts released were not small, and last week officials announced that the repository will remain closed for at least 18 months and possibly much longer. A small amount of radioactivity was also vented to the surface, and 21 workers were exposed to what seem to have been low levels.

It is clear that both the accident and its consequences could have been much worse. Maintenance resulting from a separate and unrelated accident on 5 February — a vehicle fire underground — meant that from 6 to 10 February the ventilation was unfiltered, and real-time continuous radiation monitors were switched off. Had the accident happened then, rather than on 14 February, the release would only have been detected during manual radiation readings that are taken each morning, meaning that workers would unknowingly have been exposed, and higher levels of radioactivity would have reached the environment.

<snip>

The mantra for WIPP was to “start clean and stay clean”. Accidents, the government said, would never happen. But as a News article on page 267 details, a Department of Energy (DOE) report on the incident outlines how fanciful that promise was. The report describes an atmosphere of complacency. It lists a litany of failings, from an insidious continual deregulation of safety standards and cutting of corners, to dilapidated safety equipment, and a lax security culture. WIPP’s response to the accident itself was “delayed and ineffective” adds the report.

The consequences of a release of radioactivity at WIPP, a repository for low- and medium-level waste deep underground in a remote region, are much less serious than those at a nuclear power plant. But as with the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the same characteristic errors were in play: hubris, overconfidence in safety assumptions, dilution or non-respect of safety standards, a weak security culture and, crucially, lack of tough, independent scientific and technical oversight.

<snip>

Nature 509, 259 (15 May 2014) doi:10.1038/509259a

Corrections

Corrected:

This story stated that 13 workers were exposed to levels of contamination. In fact, 21 were exposed. This has now been corrected.

[valerief]

2. I thought nuclear energy was clean and solar energy was dirty. Geez, looks like someone

running the world got it backwards.

[Ratty]

4. Is this the storage facility that's hot as an oven?

I read several years ago of a very expensive nuclear storage facility the US was building - I mean HUGE. And after it was built they discovered the internal temperature was much higher than they anticipated, like 300 degrees oven hot. The high temperatures accelerated the corrosion process and and they found the barrels would only last a hundred or so years, not thousands like they had planned for. I've looked for information on this on the web and never found anything. Is this that facility? Did I imagine reading this so many years ago?