Maddy Hayden

Carlsbad (N.M.) Current-Argus

CARLSBAD, N.M. — Workers at the USA's only underground nuclear waste repository stowed two pallets of drums deep underground Wednesday for the first time in nearly three years.

Since 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, about 25 miles east of Carlsbad, has been storing transuranic nuclear waste left over from weapons research and testing in 16 square miles of salt caves more than a third of a mile underground.

But a section of the plant was contaminated in February 2014 because one canister of waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory about 55 miles of Albuquerque ruptured in one of the storage rooms. More than 20 workers also were contaminated, and the plant that had almost 150 workers at the time was forced to close.

"It went great," said Rick Fuentes, president of the local chapter of the United Steelworkers Union and a waste handler who did not assist in moving the pallets. "We're excited to be back to work."

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Twenty to 25 workers in protective clothing and respirators unloaded the two pallets of low-level radioactive waste at 12:45 p.m. MT Wednesday near Room 5 in Panel 7, he said.

The waste already was being stored above ground at the site, and no shipments of new waste have been received. The plant receives drums of radioactive material from defense-related sites around the country generally consisting of clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactivity, mostly plutonium.

When federal money to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in western Nevada was cut in 2011, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant became the country's only underground storage facility. It does not accept spent nuclear fuel from power plants as Yucca Mountain was expected to do.

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"It was never a question of us doing the emplacement. We've been doing it right since '99," Fuentes said. "It was unfortunate that we received some waste that shouldn't have been in those drums."

New Mexico's Environment Department initially fined the federal Energy Department $54 million because of the leak — $36.6 million against Los Alamos and $17.7 against the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in December 2014.

But the federal government contested the fines. In a deal that GOP Gov. Susana Martinez worked out in May 2015, taxpayers across the country instead will pay for about $73 million in state highway improvements, including a stretch between the nuclear waste repository and Carlsbad, and projects near Los Alamos as the penalty.

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Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project had projected a December restart but always with the caveat that worker safety would trump any deadlines.

"It's the day we've all been working for," President Phil Breidenbach of Nuclear Waste Partnership, a private contractor that operates the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, wrote in email to employees.

The reopening will be celebrated Monday at the site. Martinez; Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz; Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.; and other dignitaries are expected to attend.

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