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Saturday, June 14, 2008

WIPP Resumes Waste Intake After Drum Returned to Los Alamos


Associated Press
      
    CARLSBAD — An eastern New Mexico radioactive waste repository has resumed accepting shipments after a transuranic waste drum with prohibited levels of liquid was recovered and removed from the site.
    Shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant were suspended after it was discovered that a waste drum from Los Alamos National Laboratory that did not comply with WIPP rules had been shipped.
    The drum was recovered this week and returned to the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab Friday, said Casey Gadbury, director of the national transuranic program for the Department of Energy's Carlsbad field office.
    "Our disposal operations have resumed, and shipments from sites other than Los Alamos will resume Monday,'' Gadbury said. "At LANL, we have to do some further investigations and inspections before we make a final decision.''
    WIPP, 26 miles east of Carlsbad, buries plutonium-contaminated waste from the nation's defense work in underground rooms excavated in ancient salt beds 2,150 feet below the surface.
    The drum, packaged with other drums in a standard waste box, was shipped to Carlsbad in May and was nine rows back at the underground repository when the mistake was discovered.
    The drum had been tagged as not conforming to the standards required for shipment to WIPP, but it was mistakenly placed in the waste box at Los Alamos and shipped anyway.
    An investigation, which includes the state Environment Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is ongoing.
    The EPA will investigate Los Alamos on Wednesday.
    "EPA is concerned that this event may be indicative of systemwide issues,'' wrote Juan Reyes, with the agency's Radiation Protection Division. "Therefore we will dedicate a portion of our (upcoming) discussions on how DOE will ensure that such erroneous shipments will not occur in the future at other sites.''

Copyright ©2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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