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 Seventeen workers at the Carlsbad-area "waste isolation pilot
project" (WIPP) were exposed to radiation after an accidental leak
last month from the site which stores waste from U.S. nuclear labs
and weapons production facilities.
State regulators were withdrawing the draft expansion permit to
identify safety issues that may need to be addressed in the
aftermath of that accident, New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan
Flynn told a news conference on Friday afternoon.
"We need to proceed with caution (and) assess any additional risks
posed to either workers or the public," Flynn said.
The draft permit would have allowed disposal of machinery, clothing
and other items tainted with radioisotopes, like plutonium in two
additional storage vaults and it granted changes to the way chambers
filled to capacity are sealed.
No workers were underground at the U.S. Energy Department's site
when air sensors half a mile below the surface triggered an alarm,
indicating unsafe levels of radioactive particles.
The 17 above-ground workers who later tested positive for
contamination were not expected to experience any health effects.
But the accident triggered the WIPP's closure and continuous air
testing mechanism which showed elevated levels of radiation although
not enough to be harmful to human health or the environment, Energy
Department officials said.
Waste shipments were suspended after February 5, when a truck
hauling salt caught fire below ground. No one has re-entered the
underground facility since an air-monitoring system detected the
radiation release nine days later.
Teams of investigators equipped with self-contained breathing
devices are expected to go below ground in coming weeks to determine
what caused the leak, an Energy Department official said.
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New Mexico regulates hazardous waste facilities under state law and
also is granted authority by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency to issue federal permits.
The immediate impacts on the repository, which has received up to
6,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste a year since it opened in 1999,
were unclear though waste headed its way from a Los Alamos lab was
detoured to Texas.
Federal officials could not say what would happen with above-ground
drums at the WIPP that had been expected to be stored below ground.
The site's contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership LLC, did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho;
editing by Eric M.
Johnson)
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