Fire Prompts Evacuation of New Mexico Nuclear Repository
Update ; Feb 05, 2014, 11:21 PM GMT 15m
Chief Scientist at New Mexico Nuclear Site where underground fire is underway says sensors indicate air is clear – no nuclear release – @astoneabcnews……………………………………………………………………………………………………
Earlier article
The repository is licensed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency every five years, said Rod McCullum, the director of used-fuels programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
CARLSBAD, N.M. February 5, 2014
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fire-prompts-evacuation-nuclear-repository-22380709
Emergency crews battled a fire Wednesday at the southeastern New Mexico site where the federal government seals away its low-grade nuclear waste, including plutonium-contaminated clothing and tools.
Six people were treated for smoke inhalation and released a short while later after a truck hauling salt caught fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
All employees were evacuated from the underground site after the fire broke out about 11 a.m. Wednesday, and none of the radioactive waste was impacted, plant officials said.
Authorities said they weren’t sure what caused the blaze.
At an afternoon news conference, officials said the fire occurred on a truck hauling salt in the facility’s north mine, The Carlsbad Current-Argus reported. Nuclear waste is stored in the south mine, officials said.
Fire suppression systems and rescue teams were immediately activated, and all waste handling operations were suspended, officials said.
A spokeswoman answering an emergency line late Wednesday afternoon said it was unclear if the fire was still burning or when the site might reopen. Any re-entry must be approved by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is the nation’s first and only deep geological nuclear repository. It takes plutonium-contaminated waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory and defense projects. The waste is then buried in rooms cut from underground salt beds.
Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is another underground site built as a potential repository for used nuclear fuel, but it is not operational, McCullum said.
The New Mexico facility receives 17 to 19 shipments each week from sites around the country, including Los Alamos and installations in Idaho, Illinois and South Carolina.
The repository is licensed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency every five years, said Rod McCullum, the director of used-fuels programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Radiation monitoring in the USA
2 Comments »
Leave a comment
-
Archives
- December 2025 (293)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
- January 2025 (250)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS


February 17, 2014
Catastrophic Nuclear “Event” Prompts New Mexico Evacuation Fears
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A grim “Of Special Importance” [highest classification level] report prepared by the State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM) circulating in the Kremlin today is warning that the “potentially catastrophic nuclear event” currently unfolding at the United States atomic Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico has prompted the Obama regime to begin pre-staging government forces and equipment in the event a large-scale evacuation is needed.
According to this report, the United States Department of Energy WIPP is the world’s third deep geological repository (after closure of Germany’s Repository for radioactive waste Morsleben and the Schacht Asse II Salt Mine) licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons.
A “highly significant” portion of the nuclear waste being stored at the WIPP, this report continues, was the result of the recently completed 1993 HEU Purchase Agreement between the United States and Russia that saw 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nuclear weapons downblended into low-enriched uranium and then sent to America where it was made into fuel for nuclear power plants, and of which US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz stated, “For two decades, one in 10 light bulbs in America has been powered by nuclear material from Russian nuclear warheads.”
Critical to note, however, this report says, is that the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), the private American corporation serving as executive agent for the HEU Purchase Agreement, was “deliberately targeted” for elimination by the Obama regime in early 2009 leading to its 16 December 2013 announcement that it had reached an agreement with a majority of its debt holders to file a prearranged and voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring in the first quarter of 2014.
As to why the Obama regime wanted to eliminate USEC, Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence experts contributing to this report say, was for the diverting HEU Purchase Agreement uranium for the purpose of reconstituting it to its highly dangerous U-235 level to conduct experiments at the WIPP on what is called nuclear salt-water rockets (NSWR), which is a proposed type of nuclear thermal rocket designed by Robert Zubrin that would be fueled by water bearing dissolved salts of plutonium or U-235.
Under tight strictures put upon it by US law, this report says, the Obama regime needed Russia’s HEU Purchase Agreement uranium for these NSWR experiments and which is not reportable.
On 5 February, however, this report continues, these NSWR experiments at the WIPP went “horrifically wrong” leading to an explosion and fire at the underground facility, followed by the 14 February “radiological event” that prompted its full evacuation.
Of the greatest concern to Russian nuclear experts, this report says, is the Obama regime conducting these NSWR experiments at the WIPP facility in the first place as nearly the entire Carlsbad, New Mexico region is in danger of collapsing due to the massive sink holes appearing over these areas vast underground salt domes. [See CNN video news report below]
Even worse, this report continues, are reports coming from New Mexico that their drought stricken farmers are selling massive amounts of water to oil and gas industry “frackers” draining their aquifer, and which has led to even more destabilization of the WIPP underground facility.
This is serious to note, this report says, because many scientists for decades have considered salt to have serious deficiencies in comparison to some other geologic formations for spent nuclear fuel and high level waste because such heat-generating waste can rapidly deform the rock and create instability that could endanger workers and release radioactivity.
In addition, the WIPP site is surrounded by active oil and natural gas production facilities, and reserves underlie the waste disposal area, the mining of which could result in breaches and releases of radioactivity. Pressurized brine reservoirs also underlie the waste disposal area, which could result in waste being transported to the surface, if a pathway is created by mining or other means.
Further to be noted about this ongoing nuclear “catastrophe,” this report says, was the Obama regimes Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emergency notice this past week that it is looking to spend millions on manufactured homes that can be “quickly built and deployed” to any state in America which also have “the added potential to become permanent housing.”
For the American people themselves, who this week were named as “the most drugged people in the history of the planet,” who may potentially resist the Obama regimes forced evacuation, this report warns, the US Army was reported this week to have built a 300 acre “fake city” complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway so that their soldiers can learn “new ways” on how to deal with them.
rrrrrrrrrrrrrr, that is truly one dubious source.
“goggle” that name, if you like.
Anybody have any direct info from ROSATOM?
Thank you for the excellent article assisting to expose incredible incompetence, Arc.