The Department of Energy issued the following statement today regarding new information generated during the May 15 entry into WIPP:
Since the February 14 radiological release, the Department and its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have been working deliberately to safely determine the cause of the release. The team that entered the underground facility yesterday was able to get additional visual evidence that shows a damaged waste container, identified as one from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In the new pictures, the LANL container has a cracked lid and shows evidence of heat damage. Workers will continue investigating to determine what caused the container breach and if any other containers were involved or damaged,” said a DOE spokesperson.
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Surely we can anticipate many more such incidents of container damage … yet more proof of the intractable nature of the problem of nuclear waste.