New Mexico Wins Month’s Delay on Shipments of Nuclear Wastes

The federal government Wednesday agreed to a month’s delay in its plan to ship nuclear waste to an underground storage facility near Carlsbad, N.M., while the state challenges the plan in court.

“This is a solid, round-one victory for New Mexico,” state Atty. Gen. Tom Udall said in Santa Fe after federal attorneys agreed to hold the first shipment until Nov. 8 or later.

New Mexico officials had asked a federal court to block the first shipment, which had been expected as early as today.

In court papers, New Mexico said the federal plan to ship waste from weapons-production facilities to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant “will inflict irreversible damage upon the state.”

The Energy Department took over the site last Thursday from the Interior Department after negotiations on a land transfer plan broke down in Congress.

The federal government wants to begin a seven-year test at the underground storage facility in excavated salt beds to determine whether the site can be used for permanent storage of radioactive wastes.

Plans are to ship up to 8,500 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste to the site; New Mexico has sought to limit the shipments to 4,500 drums.

The lawsuit said the New Mexico site “has passed none of the standards which apply to disposal of a nuclear waste repository. The underground repository is presently geologically unstable and cannot be predicted to remain intact.”