Inspectors re-enter New Mexico nuclear waste site after leak

By Joseph L. Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) - An inspection team ventured into an underground nuclear waste disposal vault in New Mexico on Wednesday to begin an on-site investigation of a radiation leak nearly seven weeks ago that exposed 21 workers and forced a shutdown of the facility. The mission by experts from the company that manages the site marked the first time since the mishap that workers have been sent deep into the salt caverns of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, where drums of plutonium-tainted refuse from nuclear weapons factories and laboratories are buried. Located about 25 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Chihuahuan Desert, the facility is the nation's only permanent repository for the U.S. government's stockpile of nuclear waste, much of it left over from the Cold War era. Although an alarm automatically switched the ventilation system to filtration to keep radiation from spreading, trace amounts of manmade isotopes such as americium-241, a byproduct of nuclear weapons manufacturing, were measured at the surface.



via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News http://ift.tt/PlYebf