Have you heard about WIPP? It's your money down the hole

[RobertEarl]

WIPP - Waste Isolation Project Plant - an Energy Department hole in the ground where they have been storing nuclear waste, is now closed. It was supposed to be open and safe for a hundred + years, but they had a burning drum of waste go off, filling the place with plutonium smoke and who knows what all.

So, it's closed, because workers can't go down into the hole it is so polluted. The hole is in a salt dome in New Mexico. The hole has these giant fans which pump in and draw out air from the hole so that workers down in the hole can breathe while they work. But since the fire, the fans have been turned off.

I am guessing the fans are turned off because the plutonium and who knows what else is better left down in the hole than spread across the US?

[brush]

1. God! Who even knew these things existed.

How many are there around the country and what if their surround is breached?

[RobertEarl]

2. As far as I know, just one, this size

They have been dropping waste down in many a hole, or landfill, or whatever, but this one, this WIPP, is the cream of the crop; a multibillion dollar hole.

I think the plan was to collapse the salt around the waste to seal it off. I guess then they'd put a sign up top saying: "Before digging here, look back a hundred years to when humans lived here."?

[brush]

4. HAH! Hope that sign lasts 100 years. nt

[caraher]

3. It's a pilot plant

So there's exactly one right now.

There's a plan to reopen it. I have no opinion on whether it's a good plan. I do know we have this waste from Cold War weapons programs and we do need to do something with it. The alternative to something like this is to leave that existing waste sitting around old weapons labs. It's not obvious that this is a safer option than reopening the site (and the "who knows what" was released in the accident is, in fact, well known to anyone who cares to do the research - after all, it was the detection of contaminants that revealed the screwup and led to the closure!) Plutonium-239, -240 and Americium-241 were isotopes detected in the release.

[RobertEarl]

5. Meanwhile

We are on track to creating even more waste.

What a plan!!! Go nukers!!

If someone wanted to destroy human civilization, they could not have designed a better way. And away we go!!

[caraher]

10. Actually, we have a better way of destroying civilization

It's called burning gobs of fossil fuels, and we're doing it already. We kill lots more people by burning stuff than Chernobyl and Fukushima have, even accepting the highest estimates out there.

Also, my understanding is that by law, WIPP can only store waste from the weapons programs, so unless that changes WIPP is not going to help the nuclear industry as a waste disposal option.

[RobertEarl]

11. I know WIPP is for weapon's waste

What a way to get rid of humans and civilizations --- nuke 'em!!

Are you in favor of nuke weapons and favoring to make more weapons?

[caraher]

12. Nope

We should get rid of them.

But we already have the waste from what we have on hand, and we need to do something with it.

[RobertEarl]

13. Yes we do

We do need to safely store the old waste from weapon makings.

But first we need to stop making any more. That we know we can do. Storing; we have only a clue.

[bananas]

7. Do you really believe it'll contain the waste for millions of years when it's already failed?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x303779

[RobertEarl]

18. No

It has already failed and they don't know what they are doing.

[bananas]

8. Do you really believe it'll contain the waste for millions of years when it's already failed?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x303779

[caraher]

9. I don't really know enough to say either way

I just don't know enough about the geology to have an informed opinion as to whether the plan to seal it off makes any sense. So I'm perfectly open to persuasion either way as to whether the overall plan will work as advertised. It might, it might not. Millions of years - that's just so far beyond human experience that I wouldn't bet on it.

The thing is, we have all this contained stuff from the weapons labs already. The pragmatic question is perhaps less whether this form of disposal works for millions of years than whether it's better than what we're doing otherwise, which so far seems to be "nothing." It's out there, decaying ever-so-slowly, whether or not we reopen WIPP.

[denbot]

6. I used to have a mineral specimen, halite (salt) with a brine inclusion from that mine.

That mine produced a number of examples while they were expanding the chambers.

[FBaggins]

14. Wow... you really rely on your readers to be ignorant of the facts, don't you?

No doubt it helps to avoid linking to any legitimate sources. One would assume that, by now, any regular readers would take your fantasy musings with a whole dome of salt because (as happens so often), you just make it up as you go along.

So, it's closed, because workers can't go down into the hole it is so polluted.

There had been over 100 separate trips into "the hole" as of last November and several dozen people are working there regularly... with about 2/3rds of the plant now clear. Just as with your fantasy musings with Fukushima... like the robots that can't even go into the reactor buildings without melting... or the spent fuel rods that are just gone because they were vaporized in the nuclear explosions in the spent fuel pools... or molten cores that are still blazing hot somewhere under the plants (despite lacking any physical explanation for how that's possible). We could go on and on.

It's closed for the simple reason that part of having a nuclear safety regime (whether for weapons or power production) is to have incredibly high standards (orders of magnitude beyond what might otherwise be required)... and when you fail to meet those standards (whether it was WIPP or, more likely, LANL that failed)... you end up spending years to investigate every step in the process. It doesn't matter that the release was tiny (incredibly so)... because the target was essentially zero.

I am guessing the fans are turned off

Why guess? Is Google broken on your PC?

The ventilation was turned back on in October... but has been running at a low volume for filtration. The only limitation I've seen is that they aren't pumping enough to support running diesel equipment underground.

because the plutonium and who knows what else is better left down in the hole than spread across the US?

Lol... spread across the US? We're talking about one drum that wasn't exactly filled with plutonium. They don't store that there... they store things like waste hazard suits and dirty rags that might have become contaminated.

Here are the measurements of the actual release. To talk about "spread across the US" is laughable.

http://www.cemrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/2014-CEMRC-WIPP-Rad-Release-Event-Rpt.pdf


So it's hardly "our money down the hole". It isn't as though the place will be closed down never to reopen.

[X_Digger]

15. butbutbut.. melting starfish and time-traveling radiation!11!!11!! ;) n/t

[RobertEarl]

17. Heh, x digger smokes the place up

Well, like sid posted

It (the radiation) is also lower than the levels present in the Pacific Ocean in the 1980s due to fallout from testing of nuclear weapons, the researchers point out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6042273

So what we know is that the ocean had radiation in it from the 1960's, and we all know radiation is deadly to life forms, so this specious claptrap about time traveling radiation, is, well, just claptrap. Ya'll should just stop with that?

Since nuclear weapon testing in the Pacific from the 1950's, radioisotopes have been found off the Pacific Coast. Now, after Fukushima, those levels have increased once again. So not only is there atmospheric deposition, the actual contaminated water from Fukushima is polluting the Pacific all the way from Japan to the US.

Sea stars have had some die-offs in the past, but today is the worst die-off in history. What has changed recently?

Here is a link to the science of the sea star die-off. Note the explicitly statement that the virus is NOT THE CAUSE. And that studies are continuing.

http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/updates.html

[RobertEarl]

16. Well, look who's here

The reason the fans are not blowing like they used to is to keep the plutonium smoke in the hole. Otherwise they'd crank them up and run the diesels and get back to work. But they can't because they would be polluting the atmosphere with plutonium smoke.

Funny how you go on about incredibly high standards, when in fact the standards are: do just enough and hope it doesn't blow sky-high again; like Fukushima's incredibly high standards. If it was funny, I'd laugh. But the damage done is nothing to laugh at.

For readers, here is a DU link to the fine being levied against the DoE for its incredibly high standards:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014985484
Department of Energy challenges $54M in fines over nuke dump