The United Steelworkers union is sending its own safety department scientists to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico after 13 workers tested positive last week for Americium-241 (and possible Plutonium) contamination following a leak that occurred on February 14th. All of the 13 workers requested the testing, but it is not being required of all employees who were present on the night of the leak or the following morning.
The Carlsbad chapter of the United Steelworkers is baffled as to why the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Waste Partnership, a private company contracted to manage WIPP operations, have not required the scans for employees and are calling for outside help.
USW represents workers in various DOE nuclear related facilities, including WIPP. According to the Current-Argus, president of USW's District 12, Local 9477 Rick Fuentes contacted the union's international safety department in Pittsburgh about the situation, and those scientists will travel to Carlsbad to collect radiation samples and analyze them independently from DOE and CEMRC (New Mexico State University affiliated).
While the DOE has maintained their usual "No [Immediate] Danger To The General Public" PR stance since the leak occurred, Carlsbad Field Office Manager Joe Franko did admit on Thursday that the DOE is not 100% certain, but is "pretty sure" the surrounding population centers are safe from the as-yet unknown level of release of transuranic waste from military nuclear weapons production stored deep underground at the facility in caverns cut out of a Permian salt bed. It was, of course, sold to the public as "leak-proof," though now after just 15 years (out of its intended 10,000 year isolation purpose) it's turned out not to be so leak-proof after all.
It will be weeks - or longer - before engineers and monitors can enter the underground to discover what happened to cause the leak and how high the levels may be, but DOE guesses so far include either a ceiling collapse in one of the storage caverns or an errant forklift that punctured a waste-containing barrel or barrels. Though how a forklift could have done that when the underground has been completely evacuated and off limits since a truck fire on February 7th has not yet been explained. Maybe it's ghosts?
DOE and the operating partnership have encouraged all employees to avail themselves of the body scanner. About 1200 WIPP employees have never been tested for contamination once since the facility began accepting high-level waste in 1999, so the results of general testing might turn out to be enlightening.
Common Dreams reports that residents have long complained that WIPP, as well as nuclear waste transport across the state, puts local communities at risk. Including Native American reservations, school districts and all along the highways that the waste passes through on its way to the facility...
... Tewa Women United, an indigenous organization based in northern New Mexico, slams the "negative impacts that pollution and nuclear contamination have on our bodies, minds, spirits, lands, air and water" in a statement on their website.
Former nuclear industry executive and engineer turned whistleblower Arnie Gundersen doubts DOE's transparency on the subject of this failure at the supposedly leak-proof WIPP...
"The DOE is giving us one tenth of a percent of the information they really know," he said. "In fact there is an awful lot more that should be known before we can assess the risk. The DOE has a long history of playing keep-away with the facts and promoting nuclear power."
Heh. "Keep-away" is a version of
Dodgeball. Which, as iterated by Dodgeball legend Patches O'Houlihan, is a sport of violence, exclusion, and degradation. And now, perhaps a game of hitting hapless workers with very nasty plutonium and americium contamination, then not being honest about it.
If interested, please stay tuned. I will report on developments in this story as they are made public.
Previous Diaries on the WIPP Leak:
Actinides Escape from NM's WIPP
DOE: 13 Workers Internally Contaminated at WIPP