WIPP shouldn’t aspire to be nation’s nuclear waste dump

Is it possible that the salt deposits around Carlsbad could become not only the home to WIPP, but to a far larger and more dangerous facility that would replace Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s principal storage site for very hot nuclear waste?

If Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest has anything to say about it, trucks and trains from around the country could be carrying used nuclear fuel rods, and other hot radioactive material, on New Mexico interstates and rail lines near major population centers to oil and gas and potash country in the southeast part of the state.

Unlike Nevada and its congressional delegation, which has fought Yucca Mountain tooth and nail for years, many in New Mexico seem unperturbed by the thought of the state becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump.

Despite a 20-year legal battle to keep WIPP out of the state, we’re seeming to warm up to it. WIPP has been a major economic success story after all. It has a pristine safety record in the storage chambers themselves as it celebrates the 10th anniversary since it took on its first of 7,200 shipments of low level transuranic waste.

And the people of Eddy County have per capita incomes that rival Los Alamos County.

But WIPP, like Yucca Mountain, has serious scientific opposition that presents and documents a very different and deeply troubling set of possibilities for not only the existing WIPP site, but for a potential Super WIPP down the road. And this alternative view can no longer be swept under the rug. Things are always more complicated than they seem.

President Obama’s long antipathy toward the Yucca Mountain site, based on geologic and political grounds, could cause a major reassessment of the nuclear waste issue in America.

And the chief issue really is geology. Surely there must be some geologically stable environment in which to store dangerous radioactive waste. The WIPP site, the alternative view contends, is not such a site, nor was Yucca Mountain, which lies atop a fault line in an earthquake zone. WIPP is a half a mile underground. But its immense chambers are sandwiched between two aquifers, and there’s a tempting pool of oil beneath it, which compounds its potential problems, and that of bigger sites in the same terrain.

A new report shows that WIPP is not as stable as it has been portrayed, according to a Department of Energy peer review panel of top scientists reviewing the DOE’s own hydrological models.

The DOE is recertifying WIPP this year. As part of the process a peer review panel, composed of scientists from a “technical assistance contractor in support” of the DOE, found that stratigraphic layers above the WIPP caverns that were once thought to be in a “hydraulic steady state” prove not to be. Monitoring has shown that rain has caused water levels to be “steadily rising.” The panel found that the DOE’s conceptual model “failed to correlate” with recent monitoring of wells.

In the view of CARD, or Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, the panel’s findings suggest that if the WIPP site is breached in the future — by oil drilling, let’s say — “there may not exist a reliable barrier to the migration of contaminated water.”

In other words, WIPPs contents could pollute ground water. CARD suggests that if the this part of the DOE conceptual model is wrong, then the ability of the water flowing above the WIPP site to carry and spread radioactive material has been misrepresented and the WIPP certification should be rescinded.

If a stable place in the earth cannot be found to store hazardous nuclear waste, wouldn’t it be better to spend the money to build hardened storage facilities at the current 83 waste sites, monitor them for as long as it takes until a good site is found, or until a technology exists to reuse or render the waste harmless? Some sites already use a storage strategy using dry cast storage containers, after the hot waste has cooled down for five years in storage ponds.

Why take chances with nuclear poisons by rushing to find a permanent storage site? Shouldn’t all possibilities be explored?

But it all takes time, lots of time to study. And that’s a reality that politicians find difficult to bear. It must be possible, though, for a reliable team of scientists to scour the country and come up with a dozen geologically suitable sites.

Radioactive storage is not just about the actual site, of course. It’s about turning one’s state into a transportation ground zero. All the reassurances aside, that never sits well with any city along the route.

Putting a Super WIPP in the salt beds around Carlsbad as a substitute for Yucca Mountain has inherent drawbacks. WIPP-like caverns of rock salt would melt under the intense heat of hot nuclear waste. There’s probably nowhere in the vicinity that isn’t a potential oil drilling site. The current WIPP is circled by many dozens of oil drilling and pumping rigs. Some WIPP opponents worry that injecting water under great pressure into nearly empty wells to flush out the last drops of profit could suddenly send flooding water into WIPP from as far away as three miles.

The hydrological properties in the region seem unsuited for waste storage anyway, when a fresh water aquifer is above the site and a brine aquifer is only a few hundred feet below it.

To top it off, WIPP’s scientific and NGO opponents contend that WIPP has been dug in a huge karst field, a geological feature that creates fissures and sink holes in or near the surface of certain salt formations. The government and its scientists are adamant that such a view is foolish. They hold that the karst field starts about a mile away from WIPP. But shouldn’t we be absolutely sure?

While scientific opinions and interpretations of data can differ radically, one thing is certain — independent science, not science for hire by government, and not political pressures from local mayors and boosters, should set the standards for America’s long-term handling of toxic radioactive waste, much of which will be dangerous for thousands and thousands of years.

dtessier

Whoa, JeanPatricio!

This commentary is not science fiction. Yes -- the thermal effects on salt were studied decades ago. I, too, read the reports and perhaps had an advantage in being able to question scientists at the time as well. Their studies showed that HIGH heat (as is produced by nuclear fuel rods) in the presence of moisture COULD cause even the tiniest clusters of salt solution, called "brine inclusions," to migrate, and as they migrate, to cumulatively grow through further disolution of the salt beds. There IS moisture near the salt beds. The Capitan Reef extends for miles.

Don Hancock is no idiot. Even the Sandia scientists who worked on WIPP would willingly acknowledge that Hancock was a worthy devil's advocate during the run-up to WIPP. New Mexico was fortunate (is fortunate) to have someone of such dedication raise questions on behalf of the state's citizens.

Your comment is unnecessarily insulting, mean-spirited and rude -- not the best way to win converts to your point.

LarryInNewMexico

Thanks for the article. Very well reasoned. We should make sure of what we are doing with regards to nuclear waste. If we later decide we don't want it, it won't be that easy to get rid of. Who'll take it then?

JeanPatricio

I love it. A poet and author is now an expert on Geology, Hydrology, and thermal effects on salt. Listen genius, where did you get your information? That idiot Don Hancock in Albuquerque? Come on. Please label your article "science fiction" rather than "factual commentary." I place your article in the proper place, alongside the idiots against stem cell research, evolutionary science or any other science-based endeavor of humanity.

Perhaps you would be interested to know that the thermal effects on salt were already studied decades ago when the first EIS of the WIPP site was completed (I have read the report). The findings were very supportive of a high-heat laden radioactive waste repository at WIPP. More studies must be done with current technology, but you probably want to shut that down, because the science-based results might conflict with the nice fear-based world you live in.

Your descriptions of aquifers in the area is quite amusing and totally misleading. One of the reasons WIPP was chosen because of the inability of water to migrate through the salt over long periods (as in epochal) of time. At the UNC, biologists isolated 250 million year old DNA fragments and cellulose from tiny pockets of trapped water from the late-Permian Period! This water, left over from the ancient sea that covered much of what was the continent at the time.

Thanks to misinformed journalists and writers like you, we are still using coal. Hey buddy, want to pick a fuel source that is truely screwing up the environment? You don't really care, however. From your picture, you'll be dead soon and my generation will have to work even harder to clean up the atmosphere and water. Jane Fonda and her anti-nuke movie were good entertainment and demonstrated the obvious need for safety in the nuclear industry (kind of like "Jaws" warned people not to go swimming with great white sharks). Like "Jaws," however, her movie and those that idolize her anti-nuke cause have done untold and unintentional damage to components of our environment.

By the way, speaking of the anti-nuclear industry's favorite Jane Fonda flick, you should take a drive over to the San Onofree plant that was pictured in the movie. It sits on (absolutely on the edge) the Pacific Coast with millions living in close proximity. Do you know where the interim storage site for the used power rods are? They sit in a concrete building parallel to the shoreline and within litterally stone's throw of the water. My movie, a combination of "Deep Impact" and the "China Syndrome," would involve a rock hitting the largest body of water on the planet and the resulting tsunami scraping 100 or so high-rad, one-time used rods onto to the western continental shelf of North America. After the initial extinction events, the level of mutagenic activity in the Pacific ocean increases by a factor of 1000. The United States, reeling from the cost of the recovery effort and international lawsuits, becomes the next poster child for nuclear irresponsibility (as opposed to the nations like France and England).

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WIPP shouldn’t aspire to be nation’s nuclear waste dump

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