A radioactive future for Carlsbad?

The ghastly front-page photo of perfectly, “aligned” rows of steel and lead containments, proposed for Carlsbad, made my hair stand on end (“Nuke firm eyes site near WIPP for temporary waste storage,” April 1).

Carlsbad, at the moment, is completely unstable. Not only the WIPP site instability, causing WIPP’s closure, but the fracking stresses in the land. The 2009 sinkhole has now expanded underneath the city center. These are major symptoms of instability. The population is living on pins and needles. I think our governor needs to rethink her decision to accept more waste to this fragile site.

Also, how easily can these container shapes and patterns be seen from space? Somehow, stacking highly, hot, radioactive rods together, 23 feet deep, and sometimes only 3 feet under, is not reassuring. The design creates a geometric target from space for any able terrorist country who can direct a missile across the ocean. I am not personally that paranoid, but the truth in dumping these materials seems obvious.

Insanity is storing any of this deadly filth above ground. Maybe if it smelled as horrible as it is, we would figure out a viable way to reconstitute it or destroy it. But a seemingly invisible threat is easily stored, out of sight, out of mind, until a cancer cluster forms. We do have scientific methods to measure the cause and effects of cancer clusters.

These massive “temporary” storage sites use the same brilliant solution as dumping your old sofa or rusted truck into the arroyo … cause it gets it “outta yer yard.” Engineers leave “time” out of the “fix-it” equation. The Earth moves, radiation leaks and it guarantees the contamination of the groundwater and earth. We know this! Why don’t “they” know this?

I propose that an enormous granite structure, as huge as the biggest pyramid, must be built on top of these sites. We need a marker for time, and for the safety of those to come. It will be a tourist destination, to see the location of the massive mistake buried underneath. The lesson is, “Don’t create something that you can’t ever control.” And if you discover, in time, that your creation can’t be controlled, then you have to spend the rest of your life and creative genius to correct the original mistake.