Energy chief says underground nuclear waste site has reopened

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The reopening of the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository nearly three years after a radiation leak marks a key step toward cleaning up a decades-long legacy of bomb-making and research, but the U.S. energy secretary said more needs to be done before a backlog of contaminated material starts heading to the New Mexico desert again.

The radiation release halted work at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and derailed a multibilliondollar cleanup program, raising questions about oversight across the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and leading waste to build up at sites country.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told The Associated Press that sweeping changes have been made to improve safety and that hard work by employees and technological advancements over the last three years should bolster public confidence in cleanup efforts following the 2014 leak.

“We are very, very excited about getting at least a resumption of operations,” he said during an interview late Sunday. “I do want to caution we will not be at full speed yet for a few years.”

Moniz, Gov. Susana Martinez, members of the state’s congressional delegation and others gathered Monday to formally mark the reopening of the site in around the southern New Mexico.

Officials shut down the repository in February 2014 after a chemical reaction inside a drum of inappropriately packed waste caused the lid to burst, contaminating some disposal vaults, corridors and air shafts.

The facility is carved out of an ancient salt formation about a half-mile below the desert surface, with the idea that eventually the shifting salt will entomb the waste.

Moniz acknowledged that the closure caused a backlog of waste at sites including New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where the basic materials used to fabricate nuclear weapons were produced.