New Mexico nuke dump passes test

Monday, Oct. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

A National Research Council committee said a nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad, N.M., will isolate radiation from the environment for more than 10,000 years.

If approved, the federal facility would become the nation's first permanent disposal site for radioactive materials such as protective clothing, laboratory equipment and machine parts used to make nuclear weapons, said Chris West of Westinghouse Electric Corp.

The materials have been contaminated with uranium-233 or transuranic elements with radioactive half-lives of more than 20 years in concentrations of more than a ten-millionth of a curie per gram of waste.

High-level nuclear waste in irradiated reactor fuel and from defense activities does not have a temporary or permanent solution as yet. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is under study as the national nuclear waste dump for high-level radioactive wastes.

The committee, part of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, urged scientists last week to continue to study what is called the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, or WIPP.

"Scientific analyses indicate that the WIPP repository has the ability to isolate transuranic waste for more than 10,000 years, provided it remains undisturbed by human activity," said committee Chairman Charles Fairhurst, professor of civil engineering at the University of Minnesota.

The facility can be engineered to reduce the chances of radioactive releases from human intrusion, he said during a news conference held simultaneously in Washington, D.C., and Carlsbad, N.M.

The DOE has investigated the WIPP site for a transuranic waste repository since the 1970s. WIPP is a network of chambers carved from stable salt more than 2,000 feet below the desert surface.

The waste is currently stored in 55-gallon steel drums and wooden boxes at various former nuclear weapons sites around the country.

The earliest WIPP could open is November 1997, West said. Lawsuits could delay its opening. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has already been sued by New Mexico to stop the project, West said.