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Nuclear Waste Gone from Hurricane Sandy's Path

Sandy slammed into the northeast causing deaths, ruin and billions in damage. But nuclear waste had been safely removed and ensconced in the salts of New Mexico. Source: NASA Earth Observatory

As Hurricane Sandy smashed into the northeast of the United States, nuclear power plants in its path were on the minds of many. Fortunately, nothing happened, because we do think about these things and do plan for them.

What was not on the minds of many was the nuclear bomb waste that, until recently, was also in the path of Hurricane Sandy. That’s also because of good planning. Decisions were made a long time ago that this transuranic waste, a legacy from our nuclear weapons days, should not just sit around at the surface waiting for an accident to happen, but should be put in the safest, most isolated place on Earth, so that nothing can happen to it.

Unknown to most, the United States has an operating deep permanent geologic repository for nuclear waste, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP. WIPP is located in the massive salts of the Salado Formation near Carlsbad, NM.  The repository is 2,150 feet below the surface and is licensed and permitted to accept what’s known as transuranic (TRU) waste, nuclear waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons.

Under the Department of Energy and its contractor, WTS, WIPP has operated flawlessly and without incident since 1999 (www.wipp.energy.gov). By flawlessly, I mean if anyone out there can think of another government program that is ahead of schedule and under budget, with the best safety record of any endeavor in human history, I’d like to know.

In fact, more nuclear waste has gone into WIPP than was ever destined for that other famous nuclear repository, Yucca Mountain. The equivalent of about 400,000 55-gallon drums. It’s a bit different, but some of it is as hot as anything except spent fuel. There’s been a lot of action lately about what we should do with all of our nuclear waste and, as you might expect, WIPP figures prominently in those discussions.

The World’s only operating deep permanent geologic repository for nuclear waste, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. WIPP is located in the massive salts of the Salado Formation near Carlsbad, NM, a half-mile below the Earth in the remnants of a dried-up ocean. Nuclear waste is stored here that was removed from the path of Hurricane Sandy. Source: DOE CBFO

About ten years ago, the DOE and the State of New Mexico decided to accelerate the cleanup and shipment of TRU waste from around the country. As a result, twenty-two nuclear waste sites have been completely cleaned of legacy TRU waste, and it’s all in WIPP.

Drums of nuclear waste, removed from the paths of events like Hurricane Sandy, being loaded onto pallets to begin their journey to the WIPP nuclear waste repository. A half-mile below the Earth, WIPP is carved out of a massive 200-million-year-old salt deposit. After a few years, the salt will have crept and encapsulated the waste in a thousand-foot impermeable cocoon through which water cannot move an inch in a billion years. Source: DOE CBFO

Four of those sites were in the path of Hurricane Sandy: Teledyne-Brown in New Jersey, Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pennsylvania, Brookhaven National Laboratory, in New York  and Nuclear Radiation Development, LLC, also of New York.  Long-lived defense radioactive wastes once stored in those highly populated areas are safely disposed a half-mile beneath the desert floor of southeast New Mexico in tight salts where it will take a billion years for water to move an inch.

In the United States alone, the super storm left 125 dead, thousands homeless or without power (even today) and businesses in ruin. New Jersey and New York were particularly hard hit.  While many watched as oil slicks and chemical seepage flowed into their basements, thankfully no one had to wonder whether it was radioactive.

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  • I’m glad all the DOE legacy TRU waste is gone from Sandy’s path, but you didn’t mention the 2,474 tons (Dec. 2010) of nuclear power plants’ wet and dry spent fuel inventory in New Jersey. Or the tonnage in New York. As I recall, wet pool storage at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plants became a bit of a problem with their own recent high-water situation. Fortunately, we didn’t (this time).


  • James Conca James Conca, Contributor 1 year ago

    Yes, that’s why we need to move the legislation forward that solves all the nuclear waste. In this country we have more weapons waste by volume and it is in a more nasty form like liquids and sludges. If we implement the Blue Ribbon Commission’s recommendations, we take care of all of it. Dry cask storage for spent fuel in a geologically quiet area, and disposal of the rest in salt.

  • This might be of some comfort if it were not completely meaningless… the bomb waste is not the ONLY waste that we have in this country to worry about. The nuclear power plant spent fuel waste is of HUGE concern, and it was NOT moved anywhere. As a matter of fact, every bit of spent fuel that has EVER been created since the beginnings of this industry, which is highly radioactive and extremely dangerous to humans, is sitting in huge swimming pools at each power plant all over this country- including in the path of this storm. This is a smoke and mirrors type of article- because it is the spent fuel that is endangering us all… and NO solutions in sight for it… But it did not even merit a mention in the article… why is that?

  • James Conca James Conca, Contributor 1 year ago

    No it isn’t. This shows we can do this, if allowed by the political system. Few people talk about the bomb waste but it is much nastier than spent fuel. We can deal with the spent fuel very easily, just like the defense waste. These are not scientific or technical issues, they are societal and political. Get your Senators and Congressman to support the BRC recs and we can do this. If not, we’ll be having this same conversation in 2050.

    And finish the YMP license application review, so we don’t have to rewrite the 1982 NWP Act.

  • Chris Lyon Chris Lyon 1 year ago

    I agree completely, James. It’s not technological, it’s a matter of will. This storage facility is proof of concept in every way. Let’s just get the will to do it.

  • Great article, Jim! My team and I made many of the same points in a brief posted on the WIPP website http://www.wipp.energy.gov/ . WIPP employees are very proud of the noble work they are performing for the nation!

  • James Conca James Conca, Contributor 1 year ago

    Yes, it is hard to find a more dedicated and trained workforce than exists at WIPP. And it looks like things might be moving in the direction of expanding WIPP to accept much more waste, maybe everything, as I think is best for the country as well as the environment. We’ll see what happens in the new Congress!

  • fredlinn fredlinn 1 year ago

    Certain salts can store massive amounts of heat in the form of phase shift storage—using the same phenomenon that requires the addition of an extra 80 calories of energy input to sublimate ice into water at 0*C.

    This is already being used to move and store heat from nuclear reactors and concentrating solar thermal collectors, right now, at operating temperatures of up to 1,000*C.

    These salts(primarily nitrates and phosphates) are commonly found in seawater—–and in concentrated form in deposits of dried salts left behind by receding oceans. Such as the deposits in New Mexico.

    Natural background radioactive decay within the earth’s interior generates enough trapped heat to give earth a liquid core—-composed of mainly molten iron and lava(molten rock). This forms a pool of energy with the power to slide entire continents around the face of the earth like ping pong balls(very slowly of coarse, but move them around it does—-Antarctica was on the equator at one time.) All of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that have ever happened are just a release of a small fraction of this enormous pool of energy.

    Now—let’s take all of mankind’s artificially radioactive waste—-at many thousands or millions of times the rate of release of natural radioactive decay, and bury it deep underground in the perfect medium to catch and store the heat being generated by the decay of this waste.

    I don’t think this is a very good idea.

    I think a better idea is—–don’t create radioactive waste that needs to be disposed of. We have far better ways of creating and using energy that do not require the handling, disposal and storage of radioactive waste.

  • James Conca James Conca, Contributor 1 year ago

    Not sure what you’re getting at. It is a very good idea to put nuclear waste in these salts, better than any other rock type. The thermo-mechanical properties of the Salado formation salts are ideal for this purpose. Their thermal conductivity is five times greater than the tuffs of YM or any other silicate rock so you can load them up with heat higher than other rocks because they will conduct that heat away more efficiently. They creep closed so are impermeable, actually completely impermeable. Spent fuel can never get hot enough to melt this salt, and if you use the accepted 40 foot center emplacement, the package waste surface won’t even exceed 250°C. It takes 800°C to melt these salts at the surface, even higher at depth. This is the reason they’re used to transfer heat in molten salt reactors, that and their low coefficient of thermal expansion at these temperatures.
    The reason this area is perfect is that it has almost no tectonic activity, all that plate movement, volcanism and earthquake activity goes on elsewhere, not near this location. Which is why these beds have not tilted even one degree in 225 million years.