After Yucca

With the proposed Nevada dump for high level nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain defunct, federal planning attention is turning to other ways of storing power plant and nuclear bomb waste, with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., becoming a principal candidate. Although it is a nuclear dump, storage of nuclear fuel has been prohibited at the site up to now. But wastes from Los Alamos National Laboratory—including plutonium—are being stored in salt beds there, and the site is now being scrutinized seriously to replace Yucca.

Built in the late 20th century, WIPP is one of three deep geological repositories in the world. It was constructed over the furious objections of New Mexicans, but now that it is in place residents are invested in the jobs it provides, and some local leaders there are backing an expansion plan.

The New York Times reported, “Some people despair of finding a place for what officials call a high-level nuclear 'repository' (they shy away from “dump”) but Allison M. Macfarlane, a geologist who is chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and who served on a presidential study commission established after the Yucca plan was canceled, said WIPP proves it can be done.”

The Salado potassium salt formation at the site is about 2,400 feet thick. In 2011, Nuclear Engineering International magazine reported that the formation “is equally suited” with Yucca Mountain “in terms of geology, hydrogeology, and physical, chemical and radiological interactions” with commercial and military spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from power plants. It also said, however, that a separate “disposal facility would be required to be constructed to accommodate the diversity” of waste forms.