The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., has temporarily suspended disposal operations after the underground mine was evacuated following discovery of a misaligned drum inside a waste canister on Thursday.
Workers noticed the odd alignment of the drum at about 7:30 p.m. local time and stopped waste disposal work. One of the seven drums in a waste canister was “leaning,” or not in lined up with the other drums, Mager said.
The WIPP emergency center was activated, then deactivated by 10:30 p.m. that day.
The 36 workers who were underground at the time were evacuated in keeping with safety procedures, and DOE prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership is drafting a re-entry plan, contractor spokesman Donavan Mager said by email Friday. Workers will then be able to deal with the misaligned drum.
The re-entry will give top priority to the employee safety. The plan itself will focus on re-entry into the underground site and then the storage panel where the incident occurred, then on fixing the canister so it can be emplaced, Mager said.
None of the canisters were damaged, nor was there any sign of a radiological release, Mager said, adding the canister was lowered to the floor from the hauler, which had moved it in the underground.
The generator site has not been identified. Mager said this is something that will be covered in the investigation.
The underground repository reopened to outside shipments in April 2017 following a nearly three-year shutdown after a February 2014 underground radiation release.