NUCLEAR DISASTER WATCH
RADIATION LEAK
NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL
NIGHTMARE SCENARIO 043
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South Carolina nuclear weapons waste has no place to go!
The plans to ship weapons grade nuclear waste stored at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are in limbo, after a radioactive leak that has indefinitely shut down the the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a nuclear waste dump in New Mexico.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has thus far been unwilling to reveal whether they have any contingency plan to dump the toxic waste elsewhere, should they be forced to shut down WIPP permanently.
SRS has been under a federal mandate to ship its transuranic waste to the New Mexico facility and has been doing so since 2001, according to DOE; however, about 700 cubic meters of the waste still remains in SC.
The Savannah River Site
SRS [aka, The Bomb Plant] is a nuclear reservation located in the state of South Carolina adjacent to the Savannah River, about 40 km from Augusta, Georgia. The site, owned by DOE, was built in the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for nuclear weapons. It covers more than 800km² and employs about 10,800 people.
SRS is also home to the “world’s surplus plutonium” where it is “being stored in a minimally-secured building located on top of the most dangerous earthquake fault in the South,” said a report.
The Bomb plant Promo
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)
WIPP is one of DOE’s nuclear waste dumps where the U.S. Gov buries transuranic (man-made radioactive elements that are heavier than Uranium) radioactive waste such as plutonium used in making nuclear weapons.
A shipment of contact-handled transuranic waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy
Located about 26 miles east of Carlsbad in SE New Mexico, WIPP has “disposal rooms” excavated in an ancient salt formation, about 700m (2,150 feet) underground. WIPP employs more than 800 workers. Waste disposal began at WIPP in 1999.
The Horizontal Emplacement and Retreival Equipment (HERE) is used to push remote-handled transuranic waste into horizontal boreholes in the disposal room walls. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy
The 250-million-year-old salt formation below the Chihuahuan Desert is used to dump thousands of cubic meters of TRU radioactive waste each year. About 4% of the TRU waste received at WIPP is far too toxic and the containers must be remote-handled by robots and automated machinery.
If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate… It Will!
On January 12, 2014 FIRE-EARTH forecast:
Estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites across the U.S. can potentially explode, leak, contaminate the environment
United States is dotted with an estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites containing one or more of deadly substances including radioactive, biohazardous, toxic, explosive, flammable, asphyxiating, corrosive, oxidizing, pathogenic, or allergenic materials, as well as herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers that don’t fall into those categories.
Some of the substances (hazchems), which include more than 200 types of dioxins, are so lethal that even a small leak into the water supply could kill or permanently harm millions of people, before they are detected.
Related Links
- Radiation Leak in N.M. WIPP Leaves Nuclear Waste in Limbo March 1, 2014
- Likely Radiation Leak at NM Military Nuclear Waste Dump February 17, 2014
- If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate… January 12, 2014
Fire Earth 