Operations resumed Thursday at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico after more than a day of high winds that knocked out power and stranded some workers in an elevator for about three hours.
The Carlsbad Current-Argus reported Wednesday that 36 miners were stuck in an elevator from roughly 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday due to a power outage caused by winds of up to 80 mph. Tornadoes were reported locally Tuesday, according to the article. The workers were being brought to the surface, due to the inclement weather, when the elevator’s power was lost.
Power was lost to the underground, but surface power was never interrupted, according to a spokesperson for WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership. There were no injuries. The workers were medically examined and given water when they reached the surface.
The waste disposal site called off operations Wednesday due to the extreme weather, and reopened Thursday, according to the WIPP Facebook page. High winds around the Carlsbad area on Tuesday and Wednesday forced the work supension, which affected both DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, and Nuclear Waste Partnership.
Underground workers at WIPP mine salt in order to clear out room for emplacement of defense-related transuranic waste from DOE sites.
No transuranic waste shipments had to pull off the road, “but we did reschedule a few shipments out of Idaho due to the large weather system going through the Rocky Mountain region,” a DOE spokesperson said early Thursday morning.
