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New Mexico plays a central role in America's nuclear history—and possibly its future. A fight over nuclear waste storage is playing out in Carlsbad, pitting state leaders against local officials. Looming over the argument is a radioactive legacy that has haunted New Mexico for decades.
The Los Angeles Times and ProPublica this week reported on a "death map" of the Murray Acres and Broadview Acres communities along I-40 in the western part of New Mexico, tracking residents who suffered from breast cancer, thyroid disease, and other effects of uranium exposure. The residents live next to a uranium mill owned by the Homestake Mining Company, which processed uranium to supply power plants and nuclear bombs. The mill left behind 22.2 million tons of uranium waste.
The mill operated from 1958 to 1990, even as state and federal officials knew it was contaminating groundwater. Homestake and government agencies left behind numerous broken promises that it would clean up the mill, but deadlines slipped, from the 1990s, to 2006, then 2017, then 2022.
Now, rather than finish cleaning up its radioactive mess, the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold, which owns Homestake, is buying out residents in an attempt to walk away from the site and hand it over to the U.S. Department of Energy. According to ProPublica and the L.A. Times, “Those who sell are required to sign agreements to refrain from disparaging Homestake and absolve the company of liability, even though illnesses caused by exposure to radioactive waste can take decades to manifest.”
Not very ‘temporary’ solutions in Carlsbad
Across the state, New Jersey-based Holtec International wants to ship up to 100,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants to an area near Carlsbad for what it calls “consolidated interim storage” above ground until the U.S. develops a permanent repository for nuclear waste. A consortium of city and county leaders support the plan, saying it would provide economic stability to an area dominated by boom-and-bust oil extraction.
But there are no plans for a permanent nuclear storage solution anywhere in the country, warn state leaders. They say the facility could end up holding the waste for far longer than its planned 40-year lifespan, putting more generations of New Mexicans at risk of radiation exposure. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed its final environmental impact statement for the site, which found it would have “minimal” impact. A final safety review is underway, and a final decision could come in January 2023.
Not far from the proposed Holtec site sits America's only deep geological dump for hazardous material, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. It stores items like clothing, rags, and tools contaminated with radiation from nuclear research and assembly at places like New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, burying them in a 250-million-year-old salt bed that was deemed ideal for nuclear waste.
Source New Mexico reports that WIPP's permit calls for the plant to begin closing in 2024, forever holding up to 175,000 cubic meters of waste. But the facility now wants to build more storage panels, after one was closed early in 1999, and one and a half more panels were sealed empty after a truck fire and radioactive release in 2014.
As its name suggests, WIPP was intended to be a short-term project, storing waste until other sites begin operating across the country. But in the 45 years since Congress authorized WIPP, no other sites have opened, and the Department of Energy has no plans for any other nuclear waste dumps.
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You worked in a never-ending dirt storm. You were supplied a paper mask that was worthless in about 20 minutes.”
