FSP - Microcosm News- Earth Watch Report: New Mexico's WIPP - Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Documentary

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

New Mexico's WIPP - Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Documentary - The WIPP Trail

Published on Feb 17, 2014

Published on Sep 28, 2012 by MrJmccammon
Primer for upcoming episodes of Fukushima and Beyond - Nuclear Waste by High Country Cow Punk.
Alternative Views Episode 427
1989 "The WIPP Trail" Originally Produced by Alternative Information Network
Produced by Frank Morrow
Hosts Frank Morrow and Doug Kellner
Transfer from glorious magnetic tape, Enjoy (IF you listen closely one can hear the hum of mechanical tracking, ah the good old days)
A documentary showing the ravages of nuclear power and nuclear bomb testing
on the people and environment, particularly in the New Mexico area. "The
WIPP Trail" provides statements from both sides, which reveal governmental
collusion with the nuclear industry. Funny there is a Roswell connection!
Creative Commons License: Attribution-Non-Commercial- Share Alike 3.0 USA
Redistribute This! Clips taken from video O.K. but must remain non-commercial and attribution necessary.

"The WIPP Trail" Copyright 1989
Copyright October, 1990

source video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onj5EH...

New Mexico nuclear waste site has 'radiological event'
Published time: February 16, 2014 09:36
http://rt.com/usa/new-mexico-nuclear-...

.....

Radiation leak forces closure at New Mexico waste burial site

By RALPH VARTABEDIAN
Los Angeles Times

Published: Monday, Feb. 17, 2014 - 12:00 am

The Energy Department suspended normal operations for a fourth day at its New Mexico burial site for defense nuclear waste after a radiation leak inside salt tunnels where the material is buried.
Officials at the site, known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, activated air filters as a precaution and barred personnel from entering the 2,150-foot-deep repository as they investigate what caused the leak. Radiation sensors sounded alarms late Friday, when no workers were in the underground portions of the plant.
Officials at the site discounted any effect on human health, saying no radiation escaped to the surface. But they said little about the extent of the problem or how it could be cleaned up.
"Officials at WIPP continue to monitor the situation," spokeswoman Deb Gill said. "We are emphasizing there is no threat to human health and the environment."
How long the repository will be closed and the impact on the defense nuclear cleanup program was unclear.
The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, a federal operation in eastern Idaho that is the biggest user of WIPP, said Monday that it had suspended waste shipments.
Gill said the repository shutdown occurred earlier this month after another incident in which a truck caught fire in an underground tunnel. That matter is still under investigation.
Any prolonged shutdown could cause a backup of waste at a dozen nuclear-weapons-related sites across the nation. In 2012, those dozen sites made 846 shipments to the dump, more than two per day. A spokesman at the Idaho operation said it was continuing normal business and storing the waste onsite.
WIPP officials have said little about what could have triggered the radiation leak.

Suspected Radiation Leak in Military's Nuclear Dumping Ground

'This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world'

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

(Photo: Flickr / Creative Commons / ihearttheroad)A New Mexico deep-earth repository for the U.S. military's nuclear waste has likely sprung an underground radiation leak, sparking concern among Native American communities and other residents who "carry the burden" of this state's nuclear legacy.
"Since the detonation and creation of first atomic bomb in New Mexico, we the people who live in close proximity of storage and creation of these weapons have been in a state of fear," said Kathy Wanpovi Sanchez, Environmental Health and Justice Program Manager for Tewa Women United, an indigenous organization based in Northen Mexico.
Over the weekend, abnormally high levels of radioactive particles were found underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico, where radioactive waste, including from nuclear weapons production, is dumped deep beneath the earth's surface and stored in salt formations.
"I believe it's safe to say we've never seen a level like we are seeing. We just don't know if it's a real event, but it looks like one," said Department of Energy spokesman Roger Nelson.
WIPP stores waste that releases alpha and beta radiation, which are highly cancerous when ingested, explained Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear industry executive turned whistleblower, in an interview with Common Dreams. DOE officials say radiation has not been detected in surface samples, and no workers have been exposed. They say they do not yet know the source of the suspected underground leak.
Gundersen says the technology behind WIPP is untested — hence the word "pilot" in the facility's title. "As a society, we believe that if you stick things in the earth, they are safe," he said. "But with radioactivity, it's not dead. It can come back to haunt you if there is a leak afterwards. This is alive."
Don Hancock, Director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, says the concerns about the site extend beyond the method of nuclear waste storage. "We have always thought the site is a bad site primarily because it is centrally located in one of the largest and most active oil and gas production areas in the United States. This does not seem to be an appropriate place to put waste."
The incident comes just over a week after an underground truck fire forced an evacuation of the facility.
Nuclear experts are not convinced that the situation is safe. "This kind of incident is not supposed to happen," said Hancock. "Just like the fire on the underground, there were these two incidents within a 12-day period. That is worrisome and that is a significant situation."
Storage is not the only issue facing local residents. Nuclear waste transported from across the country, and across the state from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the north, where nuclear weapons are developed, passes through "Native American reservations, major highways, and near school systems," as it makes its way to WIPP, says Sanchez.
"Our pain and death due to cancer have been ignored. We are sick and tired of all this madness. And all this transportation and waste storage is for the benefit of a nuclear war weapons arsenal. Why?" asked Sanchez. "The U.S. government disregards and takes advantage of indigenous people. This is an unequal share of the burden we are carrying."
She added, "This is highly toxic poisoning that can be eliminated by stopping the desire to be a nuclear power over the world."

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

.....