ICYMI from 2014. Meee-oooow! Misleading headline, however, the wrong type of cat litter caused an explosion at a #NuclearWaste repository in #NewMexico.
Radioactive kitty litter may have ruined our best hope to store nuclear waste
Billions invested in an underground New Mexico repository could be wasted because of one seemingly innocuous decision
By Matt Stroud
May 23, 2014
"Some of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the US is currently scattered between 77 locations all over the country, awaiting permanent storage. Until February, many experts suggested that the best place to put it was a facility about 40 miles east of #CarlsbadNewMexico, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). For 15 years, #WIPP has operated as the first and only permanent, deep geologic nuclear waste storage facility in the country, holding 'low level' radioactive materials — mostly clothing and tools exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons production — in steel barrels more than 2,150 feet below the Earth’s surface.
"But earlier this year two emergencies brought that suggestion — and WIPP’s future — into question. And now it seems kitty litter may be to blame.
What happened?
"WIPP is in a salt desert, and much of the work there involves burrowing through the salt and using huge elevators to deposit the stuff at surface level. The resulting underground caverns are then filled with radioactive waste and eventually closed shut, sealed forever.
"First, on February 5th, a salt-hauling truck caught fire. That would be an inconvenience on the side of a highway, but in an enclosed #SaltCavern surrounded by nuclear waste, it’s a potential catastrophe. Workers evacuated the site. Fortunately no one was hurt. But the fire was significant enough to shut down underground operations until investigators could figure out what happened and how to stop it from happening again. Surface-level operations continued.
"But not for long. Nine days later, late at night on Valentine’s Day, an alarm sounded, indicating that #radioactivity was present in the air underground. No one was below ground at the time, but employees on the surface activated massive fans designed to ventilate the underground air. The next day, another monitor went off — this one on the surface — indicating #AirborneRadiation. Employees who worked outside on the surface were told to take shelter inside buildings completely separated from storage operations. Valves allowing air to flow underground were sealed with high-density expanding foam. Everything came to a standstill, indefinitely.
Fallout
"There are no indications that anyone has been injured from the radiation leak. (All employees went through examinations for radiation exposure; a DOE press release says most workers were not affected, and those who were 'received less exposure than a person receives from a chest X-ray.' [THIS IS TYPICAL PRO-NUCLEAR PROPAGANDA]) But for months, nothing has changed. The standstill remains. WIPP’s 850 or so employees are mainly sitting around, waiting (or "performing surface facilities maintenance or assisting with procedure reviews and revisions") while investigators from the US Department of Energy (#DOE), the New Mexico Environment Department and elsewhere attempt to figure out what happened.
"Initially, there were two hypotheses. The first was that something had gone wrong with the supports inside the cavern where waste was being stored. If that were the case, it meant a piece of salt rock or a steel support had fallen into one of the sealed barrels, puncturing it and releasing radiation into the air.
"'That was an unlikely possibility,' says Norbert T. Rempe, PhD, a retired geologist who spent decades as a principal engineer at WIPP. The cavern where the radiation monitor went off had been dug only recently, so the chances that supports had eroded or collapsed were probably slim.
Burstlid
"Organic kitty litter likely caused a steel barrel's seal to puncture at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM. The damage and the resulting radiation leak could close the facility, experts say. (Department of Energy)
"More likely, he said, was the second hypothesis: that something had gone awry inside one of the radioactive containers — that the radioactive material had become hot for some reason, expanding and puncturing a steel barrel from the inside.
"Last month, DOE investigators went into the cavern. Pictures showed that the latter hypothesis was true; a waste container’s lid was unsealed, and dust around the lid had turned yellow from the unusual heat emanating from inside. Each barrel is labeled to track where it came from. The punctured barrel originated from #LosAlamos National Labs.
"Jim Conca, PhD, a geologist who worked for years at WIPP who now blogs at Forbes about energy issues, believes he knows what blew the lid off at least one of WIPP’s radioactive barrels. The culprit, he wrote, was kitty litter."
Read more:
https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/23/5742800/did-kitty-litter-just-kill-the-most-successful-nuclear-waste-facility
#NuclearWasteStorage #NuclearWaste #NuclearRepository
https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/23/5742800/did-kitty-litter-just-kill-the-most-successful-nuclear-waste-facility
