N.M. nuclear disposal area expands

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Workers at the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository, in southern New Mexico, have started using a newly mined disposal area.

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant made the announcement last week, saying the first containers of waste to be entombed in the new area came from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee — one of the many labs and government sites across the country that package up waste and ship it to the plant.

Known as Panel 8, the area consists of seven rooms for placing special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements. Each room measures 33 feet wide and 16 feet high and runs the length of a football field.

Carved out of an ancient salt formation about half a mile deep, the landfill outside Carlsbad received its first shipment in 1999. The idea is that the shifting salt will eventually entomb the radioactive waste left from decades of bomb-making and nuclear weapons research.