New Mexico admits nuclear plant leaking radiation

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New Mexico admits nuclear plant leaking radiation



Published on Feb 24, 2014
Federal officials confirmed a local nuclear plant in southern New Mexico is leaking waste and releasing radiation into the surrounding area. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad was leaking for days before state officials were notified. While health officials insist there is no risk to the public, it could take weeks before crews can reach the leak to figure out how it happened. The plant is the first underground nuclear repository in the US. In the meantime, Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster is back in the news: The country is planning to lift part of the nearly three-year-old evacuation order around the damaged nuclear plant, even as a new radioactive leak was discovered there. RT's Meghan Lopez discusses all things nuclear with Paul Gunter, director of Beyond Nuclear's Reactor Oversight Project.

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[popcorn]

All EPA Radiation Detectors Nationwide Suddenly OFFLINE Print

Sunday, 23 February 2014 19:58
February 23, 2014 -- (TRN) -- (EDITOR's NOTE: as of 6:00 PM EST on February 24, 2014, RADnet returned to service) For the first time, all Radiation Detectors in the nationwide "RADnet" operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are suddenly "OFFLINE." Right now, this nation is completely, totally vulnerable to the movement of radioactive materials into positions to enable an attack and we would have no warning whatsoever. This is the perfect opportunity for a "dirty bomb" attack or some type of "false flag" attack against ANYPLACE in the ENTIRE United States.*** THIS STORY IS UPDATED BELOW AS OF MON. FEB. 24. ***

EPA is claiming there is a "technical glitch." No word on when -- or if -- RADnet will be operational again.

UPDATE: Monday, February 24, 2014 -- It now appears that the OFFLINE status of the EPA "RADnet" may be **DELIBERATE.** According to sources in New Mexico, the "RADnet" had to be shut down to conceal the leak of radiation from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carsbad, New Mexico, which is onlging and presently spreading radiation into the air from its ventilation system. That plant is the only location in the United States that receives, processes, then stores (deep underground) radioactive materials from former nuclear warheads.

The WIPP suffered an "incident" on February 10, wherein radiation detectors at the WIPP sounded an alarm that radiation was coming out of the ventilation system. Within a brief time, the ventilation system went into "filtration mode" to filter any air that was coming out of the underground storage area.

According to the POTRblog.com (POTR), a proven reliable source with inside information on the internal happenings at the WIPP Plutonium disaster has provided a radiation reading for Saturday 2/22/14, taken before and after HEPA filtration of the exhaust air from the WIPP mine shaft. Based on that information, and using risk mitigating assumptions, POTR calculated that Plutonium and Americium are CURRENTLY being RELEASED INTO THE OUTSIDE AIR at a rate of 400,000 Disintegrations Per Minute (DPM), for every single minute the ventilation system is running. For those more comfortable with the Becquerel as a unit of measure, that works out to the plant exhausting 6,667 Becquerels of Plutonium and Americium PER MINUTE into the outside air.

The POTR source reported that at Station A (prior to HEPA filtration) that the small amount of air which is being sampled returned a reading of several hundred DPM's; and that the POST HEPA FILTERED AIR was reading approximately 20 DPM's.

WIPP planning documents indicated that their ventilation system has 3 fans, which which add up to at total ventilation capacity of 20,000 Cubic Meters of Air per minute. The ventilation system has 4 circuits. It is unclear which circuits are running, or at what rates. It is also unclear if there are even higher concentrated released going out of the other shafts at the plant. But given the information available, the wise risk mitigation based measurement for current releases is 400,000 DPM's every single minute.

It is also important to note that the sampling filters are tiny in comparison to the over all airflow, only a small subset of air is measured. The photos of the Station A sensors/ filters show a pipe roughly 1/2 inch in diameter as the air sample source. The actual exhaust pipe is tall enough for a person to walk in. The plant also has 4 ventilation zones, it is unclear which zones are currently being ventilated. Hence 400K DPM per minute is the MINIMUM Radiation release number on which a wise person would base risk mitigation decisions.

During the first 30 seconds of the disaster before HEPA filtration started, POTR calculated that a Plutonium + Americium cloud of 6.6 BILLION DPM's (110,000,000 Becquerels) passed by a radiation monitor 1/2 a mile North West of the Plant.

Those numbers do involve assumptions forced upon POTR by Department of Energy (DOE) because they don't release the full context of the their detections (they prefer to use Bananas as a basis of radiation exposure). POTR numbers are based on conservatively risk mitigating public health exposure, with context derived from WIPP data gleaned from the EPA permitting documents.

In that regard, understand that when WIPP release this data in a few days, you can expect AT BEST they will only mention 20 DPM being measured. Don't expect them to deliver the truthful context of what that means, nor should you expect them to release the RAW DATA and info to check their calculation. It is of utmost importance to them that they control the narrative of what is happening at WIPP.

source:
www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/316-pat