Kitty Litter $313 Million DOE Mishap Exposed 22 Workers To Radiation Forced Indefinite Closure Of DOE WIPP Underground Only "Permanent" U.S. Site For Military Transuranic Radiological Waste Disposal From Nuclear Weapons Labs

     Friday, 1 May 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - The spectacularly expensive to American taxpayers costs of operations of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) which to date has blown untold tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in monumentally failed DOE efforts to figure out what to do with in addition to staggeringly huge amounts of as yet undisposed "civilian" nuclear including high-level radioactive waste currently left spread at nuclear plants throughout the nation also has to deal with DOE's own generated tens of thousands of metric tons and mounting radiological "military" nuclear waste from nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production have further incrementally mounted as DOE Secretary Ernitz Moniz yesterday announced a settlement with the state of New Mexico in which DOE in lieu of a penalty for violations at its Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) underground nuclear waste dump and nuclear laboratory near Carlsbad, New Mexico will fund $73 million in New Mexico road and other infrastructure projects in addition to the $240 million DOE "initially" has spent in "recovery efforts" at the now indefinitely closed WIPP since a 2014 radiation mishap stemming from a barrel of radiological including plutonium waste being packaged with the "wrong sort of kitty litter" at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory which when shipped to the WIPP for disposal ruptured where it "exposed 22 workers to radiation in amounts not expected to threaten their health" yet was serious enough to cause a radiation leak which since 2014 has forced DOE to have "indefinitely suspended closure of key operations" of the WIPP site which formerly had been DOE's and the country's only permanent disposal facility for underground disposal of high-level including transuranic radiological waste from nuclear weapons research and development.
     Readers interested in more information about the above can go to the 1st link below to the Reuters article and/or the 2nd link below to the New York Times article citing and mostly derived from the Reuters article. Those readers interested in more information specifically about DOE's now "indefinitely" closed Waste Isolation Pilot (WIPP) can go to the 3rd link below to the Wikepedia entry about the facility. Finally those readers interested in the epic history of the Yucca Mountain debacle in Nevada the only other United States designated (to open in 1998) still currently unoperational DOE "study" facility for the disposal of what now are hundreds of thousands of metric tons of undisposed civilian nuclear including high-level radioactive waste can go to the Wikepedia entry for the Yucca Mountain facility at the 4th link below. [UPDATE] Readers interested in seeing a full-color DOE picture of the WIPP facility burst kitty litter plutonium radioactive waste drum appearing in The Guardian U.S. Edition can go to the article also largely derived from Reuters to the 5th link below.
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/01/us-usa-new-mexico-nuclear-idUSKBN0NM2X020150501?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/04/30/us/30reuters-usa-new-mexico-nuclear.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/01/new-mexico-radiation-accident-73m-compensation-deal-struck-over-leak?CMP=share_btn_fb

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