Albuquerque, NM (KKOB) — On Tuesday, federal officials gathered in southern New Mexico to mark the 25th anniversary of the nation’s only underground repository for radioactive waste. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad has taken in around 13,850 shipments from more than a dozen national laboratories and other sites since 1999. However, a a radiation release at the repository in 2014 contaminated parts of the underground facility, and forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure. Dozens of boxes containing drums of nuclear waste that were packed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to be stored at WIPP were rerouted to Texas, where they’ve remained ever since at an above-ground holding site. DOE officials have not answered questions about whether other methods were considered for changing the composition of the waste, or what guarantees the agency might offer for ensuring another thermal reaction doesn’t happen inside one of the drums.
