WIPP -- Why It's Still Unsafe

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Excerpt:

WIPP — Why It's Still Unsafe.

by Don Hancock,
Nuclear Waste Project

"A cornerstone to the [DOE] cleanup strategy is the nation's first deep geologic radioactive waste disposal facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, located near Carlsbad, New Mexico."
-Accelerating cleanup: Focus on 2006. U.S. Department of Energy, June 1997

"The high priority given to WIPP, which is part of a flawed repository program, is largely due to politically expedient promises made to states during the Cold War that enabled DOE to continue focusing on weapons production."
-Containing the Cold War mess: Restructuring the Environmental Management of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex. Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, October 1997.

Although the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facilities pose major public health risks, the agency's efforts over the past 25 years have focused on trying to solve a political problem rather than developing a comprehensive, scientifically sound, publicly acceptable program to address those risks. Designated by DOE as its "cornerstone" facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), located in southeastern New Mexico, would the world's first nuclear waste repository. It is to handle less than two percent of DOE's existing nuclear weapons waste, leaving the majority of the wastes with no "disposal" site. During the next 35 years WIPP is to be the financial and public relations centerpiece of DOE's "cleanup" efforts, while very few sites would be cleaned and closed. DOE's major facilities will be maintained- and in some cases even expanded to provide longterm capability to manufacture nuclear weapons.

As an example of how WIPP does not address public health risks, in its environmental impact statements for WIPP, DOE concludes that it is safer to leave the waste in those existing storage sites for up to 100 years than to ship them to WIPP. The dangers posed by the facility go beyond the deaths and injuries during its lifetime, as WIPP is a technically flawed facility that poses longterm threats to future generations.

DOE's determination to open WIPP in May 1998 implicates other government agencies that have regulatory authority over the facility. If those agencies rubberstamp DOE's plans, it will further undermine public confidence in those institutions. The problems of WIPP and the obstacles to its opening are key aspects of debate and citizen action in New Mexico, and the courts will certainly become involved in the decisions. But people far beyond New Mexico will be affected by those decisions as millions live along transportation routes that pass through 22 other states. Moreover, what happens in the next few months will have profound implications for the federal government's management of all its nuclear wastes.

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