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Empresas y finanzas

Second container possibly leaked at New Mexico nuclear dump


    (Reuters) - A second container of plutonium-contaminated debris may have contributed to a radiation leak that has led to the indefinite suspension of operations at an underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico, a U.S. Energy Department official said on Thursday.

    Preliminary findings from an investigation of a Feb. 14 accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad that sent high levels of radiation into a salt mine half a mile (0.8 km) below ground where nuclear waste is stored suggested the culprit was a single ruptured barrel that originated from Los Alamos National Laboratory near Santa Fe.

    "What has come out insinuates we have another potential drum," Joe Franco, manager of the Energy Department field office in Carlsbad that oversees the plant, told an evening public meeting.

    Franco said further investigation of the underground suggests the rupture of an additional barrel of nuclear waste deposited in a separate waste panel.

    Early findings in a probe of the mishap indicate at least one barrel of waste whose contents included nitrate salts, organic matter and lead underwent a chemical reaction generating heat and ruptured the container.

    It may be years before the dump in the Chihuahuan Desert of southeastern New Mexico is fully operational, Energy Department officials have said.

    (Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Lisa Shumaker)