Drums of nuclear waste in a salt shaft at New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. (photo: Brian van der Brug/LA Times)
Nuclear Accident in New Mexico Ranks Among the Costliest in US History
By Ralph Vartabedian, Los
Angeles Times
23 August 16
When
a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in
New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the
Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations.
The
early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive
long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup
program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department’s
credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste.
But
the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history,
according to a Times analysis. The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2
billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial
meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
The
Feb. 14, 2014, accident is also complicating cleanup programs at about a dozen
current and former nuclear weapons sites across the U.S. Thousands of tons of
radioactive waste that were headed for the dump are backed up in Idaho,
Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere, state officials said in interviews.
Washington
state officials were recently forced to accept delays in moving the equivalent
of 24,000 drums of nuclear waste from Hanford site to the New Mexico dump. The
deal has further antagonized the relationship between the state and federal
regulators.
“The
federal government has an obligation to clean up the nuclear waste at Hanford,”
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement. “I will continue to press them
to honor their commitments to protect Washingtonians' public health and our
natural resources.”
Other
states are no less insistent. The Energy Department has agreed to move the
equivalent of nearly 200,000 drums from Idaho National Laboratory by 2018.
“Our
expectation is that they will continue to meet the settlement agreement,” said
Susan Burke, an oversight coordinator at the state’s Department of
Environmental Quality.
The dump,
officially known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, was designed to place
waste from nuclear weapons production since World War II into ancient salt
beds, which engineers say will collapse around the waste and permanently seal
it. The equivalent of 277,000 drums of radioactive waste is headed to the dump,
according to federal documents.
The
dump was dug much like a conventional mine, with vertical shafts and a maze of
horizontal drifts. It had operated problem-free for 15 years and was touted by
the Energy Department as a major success until the explosion, which involved a
drum of of plutonium and americium waste that had been packaged at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory.
The
problem was traced to material — actual kitty litter — used to blot up liquids
in sealed drums. Lab officials had decided to substitute an organic material
for a mineral one. But the new material caused a complex chemical reaction that
blew the lid off a drum, sending mounds of white, radioactive foam into the air
and contaminating 35% of the underground area.
“There
is no question the Energy Department has downplayed the significance of the
accident,” said Don Hancock, who monitors the dump for the watchdog group
Southwest Research and Information Center.
Though
the error at the Los Alamos lab caused the accident, a federal investigation
found more than two dozen safety lapses at the dump. The dump’s filtration
system was supposed to prevent any radioactive releases, but it malfunctioned.
Twenty-one
workers on the surface received low doses of radiation that federal officials
said were well within safety limits. No workers were in the mine when the drum
blew.
Energy
Department officials declined to be interviewed about the incident but agreed
to respond to written questions. The dump is operated by Nuclear Waste
Partnership, which is led by the Los Angeles-based engineering firm AECOM. The
company declined to comment.
Federal
officials have set an ambitious goal to reopen the site for at least limited
waste processing by the end of this year, but full operations can not resume
until a new ventilation system is completed in about 2021.
The
direct cost of the cleanup is now $640 million, based on a contract
modification made last month with Nuclear Waste Partnership that increased the
cost from $1.3 billion to nearly $2 billion. The cost-plus contract leaves open
the possibility of even higher costs as repairs continue. And it does not
include the complete replacement of the contaminated ventilation system or any
future costs of operating the mine longer than originally planned.
An
Energy Department spokesperson declined to address the cost issue but
acknowledged that the dump would either have to stay open longer or find a way
to handle more waste each year to make up for the shutdown. She said the
contract modification gave the government the option to cut short the agreement
with Nuclear Waste Partnership.
It
costs about $200 million a year to operate the dump, so keeping it open an
additional seven years could cost $1.4 billion. A top scientific expert on the
dump concurred with that assessment.
In
addition, the federal government faces expenses — known as “hotel costs” — to
temporarily store the waste before it is shipped to New Mexico, said Ellis
Eberlein of Washington’s Department of Ecology.
The
Hanford site stores the equivalent of 24,000 drums of waste that must be
inspected every week. “You have to make sure nothing leaks,” he said.
The
cleanup of the Three Mile Island plant took 12 years and was estimated to cost
$1 billion by 1993, or $1.7 billion adjusted for inflation today. The estimate
did not include the cost of replacing the power the shut-down plant was no
longer generating.
Other
radioactive contamination at nuclear weapons sites is costing tens of billions
of dollars to clean up, but it is generally the result of deliberate practices
such as dumping radioactive waste into the ground.
James
Conca, a consultant who has advised the Energy Department on nuclear waste
issues, described the accident as a comedy of errors and said that federal
officials are being “overly cautious” about the cleanup. “It got contaminated,
but a new exhaust shaft is kind of ridiculous,” he said.
For
now, workers entering contaminated areas must wear protective gear, including
respirators, the Energy Department spokesperson said. She noted that the size
of the restricted area had been significantly reduced earlier this year.
Hancock
suggested that the dump might never resume full operations.
“The
facility was never designed to operate in a contaminated state,” he said. “It
was supposed to open clean and stay clean, but now it will have to operate
dirty. Nobody at the Energy Department wants to consider the potential that it
isn't fixable.”
Giving
up on the New Mexico dump would have huge environmental, legal and political
ramifications. This year the Energy Department decided to dilute 6 metric tons
of surplus plutonium in South Carolina and send it to the dump, potentially
setting a precedent for disposing of bomb-grade materials. The U.S. has
agreements with Russia on mutual reductions of plutonium.
The
decision means operations at the dump must resume, said Edwin Lyman, a
physicist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“They
have no choice,” he said. “No matter what it costs.”
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