San Francisco: New Mexico has given its approval to resume operations at the nation’s only permanent nuclear waste disposal site after state inspectors found the facility safe to reopen for the first time since a radiation leak there nearly three years ago, officials said on Thursday.
However, it remained unclear how much longer it would take the US Energy Department to complete its checklist of corrective actions inspectors have identified as necessary to resume waste burial at the site near the town of Carlsbad. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico has been shut down indefinitely since February 2014, when a barrel of plutonium-contaminated debris entombed half a mile beneath the desert floor ruptured, spewing radiation that leaked to the surface.
The accident, in which 22 workers were exposed, ranked as the facility’s worst mishap since it opened in 1999. The site, privately operated under contract for the US, was built for the disposal of radioactive refuse generated for decades by the DOE’s network of nuclear weapons laboratories and development facilities.
