Time, cost of reopening New Mexico nuclear dump unknown
Site hit by fire, radiation leak
The Energy Department has identified 7,000 steps needed to reopen its badly damaged nuclear waste dump in New Mexico but cannot say how long it will take or how much it will cost.
The agency was expected to release a written recovery plan Thursday, but instead provided a few details about the plan, which awaits approval by the department.
Outside experts said the dump probably will not reopen until well into 2016, and the cost of an accident, in which a waste drum ruptured, will approach $1 billion.
Although they didn’t talk about the cost, Energy Department officials reiterated at a briefing in Carlsbad, New Mexico, on Thursday that there was “strong support” in Congress for putting up the unspecified amount of money required to restart the plant, which was shut down in February.
The dump, in a deep salt bed, had two accidents this year. First, a large fire broke out on a mining truck inside the salt mine, 2,150 feet below the surface. Shortly thereafter, a waste drum ruptured, releasing radioactivity that contaminated a significant part of the mine.
Some material traveled up ventilation shafts to the surface, where 21 workers were exposed, according to an accident investigation.
The investigation so far has not explained why the drum ruptured nor what chemicals were inside. The drum was packaged at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The dump’s shutdown has caused a backup of nuclear waste at Energy Department weapons labs and cleanup sites across the nation.
Officials from the Energy Department and its contractors did not say when they expected the dump to reopen or how much it would cost.
Jim Blankenhorn, a manager for Nuclear Waste Partnership, the operator of the dump, said the new safety document for operating the plant would take nine months to prepare.
The Energy Department must drill a new ventilation shaft, repair a broken waste hoist, clean up debris and soot, stabilize the mine walls that have gone unattended for nine months, put new batteries in vehicles, install a new ventilation system, erect a bulkhead to seal off the room with the ruptured drum and seal surfaces that are contaminated with radioactive dust, Blankenhorn said.
Once recovery operations begin underground, the existing damaged ventilation system will allow only two diesel-powered vehicles to operate at the same time in the mine. That will limit how fast work can proceed.