Radioactive Waste Cleared for Transport to N.M. Site

The Energy Department, getting the go-ahead from a federal judge, said Monday it will send its first shipment of radioactive waste to a disposal site in New Mexico this week.

The state and four environmental groups had sought to block the shipments, but U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn refused Monday to issue an injunction postponing the shipments. He said the facility was legally free to accept waste.

The Energy Department gave notice to New Mexico this month that it would begin shipping 36 containers of highly radioactive waste from its Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., pending a court ruling.

“We are making formal notification to the appropriate parties that nonmixed waste will be shipped from Los Alamos National Laboratory to WIPP starting this week,” Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a statement.

There was no immediate response from New Mexico officials. State Atty. Gen. Patricia Madrid was en route to Washington. Her office in Santa Fe did not comment.

Don Hancock, a lawyer for the Southwest Research and Information Center, one of the groups that sought the injunction, said the group had “not given up” and would see if an appeal of Penn’s decision was possible.

Short of that, the 36 containers of so-called transuranic waste from Los Alamos, also in New Mexico, will be shipped by special trucks and placed in a vault 2,000 feet below the surface, where it eventually will be encased in surrounding salt beds. The waste, left over from the government nuclear weapons program, will remain radioactive for hundreds of years.