EXAMPLE 2: Expanding WIPP's Mission

The Official WIPP

In 1987 a serious proposal began circulating around New Mexico, serious enough to be championed by then-governor Garry Carruthers. Several western states were competing for the supercooled supercollider and the deal was for New Mexico to get the supercollider in exchange for expanding the mission of WIPP to include hot, high-level waste. All other proposed commercial waste sites would be abandoned, including Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The proposal was presented in a "White Paper" that was circulated in the science and political communities in New Mexico. The anonymous paper was obviously prepared by someone associated with the Official WIPP. The selling point for New Mexico, then as now, was that bedded salt deposits were an ideal disposal medium. Here are some excerpts about salt I found on the WEB.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/index.html

"Government officials and scientists chose the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site through a selection process that started in the 1950s. At that time, the National Academy of Sciences conducted a nationwide search for geological formations stable enough to contain wastes for thousands of years. In 1955, after extensive study, salt deposits were recommended as a promising medium for the disposal of radioactive waste. Since then, bedded salt has been one of the leading candidates for the permanent disposal of radioactive waste.

Salt formations at the WIPP were deposited in thick beds and large expanses of uninterrupted salt beds provide a repository free from the disturbances of large earthquakes. That proven stability over such a long time span offers the predictability that the salt will remain stable for a comparatively short quarter million years. That's about how long the WIPP-bound waste will take to lose most of its harmful radioactivity and no longer be a threat to the environment. At the depth of the WIPP repository, the salt will slowly encapsulate the buried waste in the stable rock. Relatively small amounts of brine, salt-saturated water, were trapped in the formations millions of years ago. Moisture and salt molecules in the brine will help the recrystallization process to naturally encapsulate the waste in the salt. Meanwhile, salt rock also provides shielding from radioactivity similar to that of concrete."

The Other WIPP

Science has its own mythologies and one is the desirability of salt beds for the disposal of nuclear waste. The myth of salt got started because geologists in the 1950's were looking for an inexpensive place to dump waste left over from WWII. The first plan was to dissolve out disposal chambers in salt domes by circulating fresh water and then pumping in the waste. Then it was recognized that liquid waste could migrate and Congress passed a law requiring that all waste must be converted to a solid. The committee of scientists that examined geologic disposal didn't really favor salt over other media, but abandoned salt mines were cheap and the focus shifted to salt beds in Kansas. When people in Kansas decided they didn't want nuclear waste in their back yard the plans for salt shifted to the more hospitable political climate in New Mexico.

When a group of sixteen prominent geochemists in the National Academy of Sciences, in 1978, learned of the plan to put thermally hot radioactive waste in the salt beds in New Mexico they took immediate action. They drafted a letter that spelled out incompatibilities between salt and thermally hot nuclear waste, sent the letter to other geologists in the Academy, and asked for their support. They pointed out that hot waste would attract brine and high-temperature reactions between the waste the brine and the canisters would make a potent solvent that presented special problems such as the creating "hot spots beyond designated safety." Writing in the conservative style of science they conclude, "In our view, the questions directly affect the viability of salt for waste disposal. Until satisfactory answers to these questions are at hand, the problems will hover as threats to the long term safety of any disposal site in bedded salt."

The sixteen geochemists who signed the appeal were superstars in the constellation of science, names that still inspire awe in the geologic profession, and yet they seem to have lost the battle because plans for disposal in bedded salt in Texas went forward anyway. On the other hand, the plan to put thermally hot reactor waste in WIPP were abandoned at about that time, so maybe their protest worked.

Today, there is talk of expanding the mission of WIPP to include hot commercial reactor waste. If the plan for Yucca Mountain in Nevada should fail, the pressure may return on New Mexico and WIPP. If it does, let us hope that the sixteen rebel scientists won the day and that twenty years later someone will remember that they did.

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