Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

ABOUT

Description and Current Mission

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation's only deep geologic long-lived radioactive waste repository. Located 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, WIPP permanently isolates defense-generated transuranic (TRU) waste 2,150 feet underground in an ancient salt formation.

WIPP was constructed for disposal of defense-generated TRU waste from DOE sites around the country. TRU waste consists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris, soil and other items contaminated with small amounts of plutonium and other man-made radioactive elements. The waste is permanently disposed of in rooms mined in an underground salt bed layer over 2000 feet from the surface.

TRU waste began accumulating in the 1940s with the beginning of the nation's nuclear defense program. As early as the 1950s, the National Academy of Sciences recommended deep disposal of long-lived TRU radioactive wastes in geologically stable formations, such as deep salt beds.

Sound environmental practices and strict regulations require such wastes to be isolated to protect human health and the environment.

Bedded salt is free of fresh flowing water, easily mined, impermeable and geologically stable — an ideal medium for permanently isolating long-lived radioactive wastes from the environment. However, its most important quality in this application is the way salt rock seals all fractures and naturally closes all openings.

History of WIPP

Throughout the 1960s, government scientists searched for an appropriate site for radioactive waste disposal, eventually testing a remote desert area of southeastern New Mexico where, 250 million years earlier, evaporation cycles of the ancient Permian Sea had left a 2,000-foot-thick salt bed.

In 1979, Congress authorized WIPP, and the facility was constructed during the 1980s. Congress limited WIPP to the disposal of defense-generated TRU wastes in the 1992 Land Withdrawal Act. In 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certified WIPP for safe, long-term disposal of TRU wastes.

On March 26, 1999, the first waste shipment arrived at WIPP from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

WIPP's disposal rooms are nearly a half mile below the surface (2,150 feet). By comparison, the Empire State Building is only 1,454 feet high.

Browse this page to keep updated on NukeWatch and other local community groups efforts to STOP FOREVER WIPP

The mission of the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition is to stop WIPP expansion and ensure health and safety issues are fully addressed.

STAY INFORMED:

Stay Informed of All Permit-Related Happenings at WIPP! Sign Up for Updates:

The New Mexico Environment Department maintains a Facility Mailing List to which you can add your name and address to get the latest information – just email Ricardo Maestas at the New Mexico Environment Department at ricardo.maestas@state.nm.us and ask to be added to the list.  Or mail your request with your mailing address to:

Ricardo Maestas

New Mexico Environment Department-Hazardous Waste Bureau

2905 Rodeo Park East, Bldg. 1

Santa Fe, NM 87505

WIPP also uses the facility mailing list to inform you about opportunities to provide public comments.  NMED provides their list to WIPP.

More Info and signup options:

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Video Presentation on WIPP Expansion - February 5, 2022

Community Responses & Criticisms to WIPP Forum July 7

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Environmental Management held a Presentation and “Community Forum” for Santa Fe on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), formatted as a hybrid in-person and Zoom meeting on Thursday, July 7, 2022.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico is extremely disappointed and unsatisfied with the outcome of this "forum" and is not alone in criticizing both the substance of the meeting and the format. See more criticisms below from others who attended:

Read the following Letter to the Editor in the Santa Fe New Mexican paper, July 19:
On the Mark

Kudos to Scott Wyland for his balanced and accurate description of what occurred during the July 7 community forum to address the public's concerns about proposals and plans related to the storage of plutonium-contaminated waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad. ("Critics unhappy with nuclear panel," July 9)

As a virtual participant, I judged the forum to be nothing more than a dog-and-pony show by the U.S. Department of Energy and WIPP's managers: They never intended to have a meaningful and open exchange about the public's concerns. With a seeming ethos of "asking forgiveness is easier than obtaining permission, we shouldn't be surprised if this and future Energy Department proposals are just more stealth actions, which will ultimately turn The Land of Enchantment into America's Nuclear Waste Dump.

Dick Goldsmith

Santa Fe


More Recent LTEs:
My View Cynthia Weehler

WIPP 'chat' fell short of exchange of information

"Let's chat about WIPP," said General Manager Reinhardt Knerr ("Letters to the Editor," July 7) on the day of his planned public forum for the good people of Northern New Mexico.

Well, let's do chat. Your community meeting for the public was a chat disaster. Chats are back-and-forth exchanges of information. Chats don't gag one side so the other is the only one talking. Your "chat" was a mind-numbing, 48-slide Power Point and lecture advertising the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

After this, we were told — as if we were children — to write any questions we had on index cards and turn them in to the enforcer — er, I mean moderator. He then chose the questions he wanted answered and, for a few more minutes, a one-way "chat" occurred. After that, "participants" were invited into a room, only a few at a time, to talk one on one with the presenters. This "divide and conquer" strategy meant no one but the two "chatting" could hear the question and the answer.

Watch the video recording of the full meeting with the chat included below or on YouTube here

This wasn't our first rodeo dealing with the Department of Energy, and we were prepared to ask for what would meet our needs. I stood at the end of the formal presentation to ask if I could speak for a moment — and that's as far as I got. I was told forcefully, "No ma'am" and, "You need to sit down." It was eerie to see the previously jolly demeanor of the presenters turn into a vision of your worst high school teacher.

The response was telling. I had no idea the Department of Energy/WIPP presenters were so frightened of the public. The very idea that we might actually try to interact with them turned them into autocratic bullies who were afraid of what we might "chat" about. The Department of Energy is afraid to meet with us as equals.

Because we have no power and are not even allowed to speak to this overbearing agency, we've asked our congressional representative to host a meeting between the Department of Energy and the public. We've asked the governor to meet with us to discuss this. Instead, we hear the "chatting" of crickets.

The Department of Energy is creating a whole new mission for WIPP that puts the public at incredibly increased risk. That alone should guarantee us a voice. Instead, we're offered an Orwellian "chat" that insults as it silences.

Cynthia Weehler is co-chair of 285ALL, grew up in Roswell and wants those at risk to know about it. She lives in Santa Fe. More reaction to the recent WIPP "chat" is available at santafenewmexican.com.


Citizens say WIPP conversation was anything but

One cannot hear with out deep anger the satisfaction and pride expressed by three men to an overflowing crowd at the recent "update" to the increasing capacity of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. From 300 shipments of radioactive waste across New Mexico highways into deep vaults, they seemed pleased that 600 is soon to become 680 a year, with ever-increasing shiploads a year indefinitely. While the Carlsbad salt beds are to encroach over time over these lethal containers, high-level radioactive waste remains dangerous to humans and the more than human life forms for millennia. Realizing this, Finland has isolated its radioactive waste on an island, Onkalo, filled the main access tunnel with rubble and concrete and sealed the entrance.

No one working on the project today will be alive, yet the radioactive waste receptacle must last for 100,000 years — that's as long back as the Ice Age, before homo sapiens had arrived; that is longer than any man-made structure has survived to date (more than pyramids, more than Stonehenge). As geologists agree, WIPP and its radioactivity will last forever. Who can guarantee that responsible guardianship of this area in New Mexico can be sustained? What "company" or what "government" will be here to safeguard what must be isolated from all others life forms, from the water, from escaping into the air? What language will be understood 100,000 years hence? Finland has chosen a skull and cross bones to mark the spot. What will New Mexicans choose?

M. Eagle

Santa Fe


Not a chat

Last night's Community Forum and Open House on WIPP, sponsored by the Department of Energy, had all the hallmarks of a meeting designed to shut out informed questions from local citizens. First, there were no handouts so we relied on a power point presentation that was difficult to see and no laser pointer to show complex information. Talk about acronyms, jargon, and bureaucratic terms with no explanation for the lay citizen! What are "upwinders?" Is my property north of WIPP an upwinder for plutonium powder accident? The U.S. Department of Energy presenter could hardly be heard? As a lay citizen, I came to learn and ask questions. There were too many barriers to do either with the poor AV system and no time for a majority of questions to be addressed. If DOE truly wants to provide information to the public, get some coaching on making clear presentations. Unless — all this was by design to create less than full transparency. You were out of luck if you had come to get information. You couldn't hear; you couldn't see; and there was no time left to address questions sufficiently.

Christine Marchand

Eldorado


Undemocratic

I attempted to record the WIPP town hall in Santa Fe on behalf of my organization, Available Media. At first I was told I could not video record at all. I reminded the security people that this is a democracy where freedom of the press is valued and was eventually assigned a corner of the small room allocated for the meeting. I recorded a long dialogue by WIPP representatives on their many accomplishments, along with thwarted attempts by the public to speak about their concerns. Some of our political representatives were there as well as leaders of communities concerned about transportation of surplus plutonium which is part of WIPP's planned expansion. None were allowed to speak. Some were treated rudely.

At the end of the hour-plus DOE dialogue, 15 minutes were allotted for audience questions. I watched the questions being carefully filtered. After the public meeting when individuals asked WIPP officials questions one on one and received answers, I was not allowed to record the exchanges. I fought for my country but this kind of repression was not what I fought for. Democracy took a blow last night in Santa Fe and we have WIPP officials and their henchman-like security people to thank for that.

Bob Aly

Dixon


Bait-and-switch meeting

The "community forum" that the manager of the DOE, Carlsbad Field Office promised to the people of Santa Fe on July 7, in which we could "chat about WIPP," was anything but a forum. DOE put on a dog-and-pony show and forbade the people, including an elected representative, to speak.

With this bait-and-switch meeting, indeed with the whole DOE scheme to extend the lifetime and mission of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, DOE is pissing on our boots and telling us it is raining.

James Randall Oyster

Santa Fe


Not helpful

I tried to "chat" with the Department of Energy officials about WIPP at their Santa Fe meeting as they had been invited us to do. About 200 people attended both in-person and online. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to speak our questions directly and DOE left almost no time to answer them anyway. DOE seemed unprepared for the high turnout and was rude to members of the public, at least one journalist and at least one elected official. Many in-person attendees had to watch the presentation on TV and none of the online public could see, or chat with presenters, during the poster display.

DOE has long resisted describing future plans for expanding WIPP to the public, even refusing to allow the phrase "WIPP expansion" to be mentioned during hearings. The public was hoping finally to find some transparency on this issue from DOE, but that didn't happen at this meeting.

Deborah Reade


Watch the video recording of the full meeting with the chat included below or on YouTube here

WIPP Updates

Nuke waste rules proposed for Carlsbad-area site critiqued by watchdogs, local leaders

“We are opposed to the idea of continuing to expand the WIPP underground…Back when this got started, everyone agreed it would take 25 years and all the waste would be emplaced…That’s not going to happen by 2024.

That’s not the citizens of New Mexico’s fault or NMED’s fault. It’s on the DOE. They don’t want an end date. That’s something we need to push on.” — Nuclear Waste Program Director Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center

By  | January 6, 2023 news.yahoo.com

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant operates under a permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), which is renewed every 10 years.

That process is ongoing for WIPP, and NMED added several provisions in a draft permit released last month that called for a stricter accounting of waste coming to WIPP each year, required updates on the process of finding a new repository and demanded a greater priority be placed on disposal of nuclear waste generated in New Mexico.

Feds push plan to dispose plutonium using nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad

“We want an end to the situation where New Mexico is the only nuclear waste dump for all 50 states. The concern is that if you increase the number of shipments, the number of years, and you increase the dangerousness of the waste, at some point, somewhere an accident is inevitable.” – Cindy Weehler, co-chair of Santa Fe-based activist group 285 ALL

By Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus | January 5, 2023 currentargus.com

Federal nuclear waste managers said they planned to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapons-grade plutonium at a nuclear repository in New Mexico after the waste is diluted to a lower level of radioactivity.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) proposed in 2020 a “dilute and dispose” method of eliminating the plutonium from the environment, ultimately via emplacement at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant repository near Carlsbad.

Before that can happen, the NNSA said the waste can be “downblended” to meet requirements at WIPP, which is designed to dispose of transuranic (TRU) waste that can only be of a certain level of radioactivity.

Albuquerque Journal Editorial: NM right to ask for accounting of nuclear waste

“I think there’s this mentality that New Mexico can just be the forever home for all the nation’s waste. It’s an exploitative mentality regarding our state.” — Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces

BY ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD | January 4, 2023 abqjournal.com

It is more than fair, when you house a radioactive waste facility like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, to ask how much waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons program still needs a home.

Especially when the nation keeps making more.

In the proposed permit for the federal government to continue storing nuclear waste at WIPP in southeastern New Mexico, the New Mexico Environment Department is seeking a full accounting from the U.S. Energy Department of materials still needing to be cleaned up and shipped to WIPP from laboratories and defense-related sites around the country. It also suggests developing another storage site (Hint: How about the $13.5 billion already spent on Yucca Mountain?). And it puts Congress — the same Congress that just approved spending more to make key plutonium components for the nation’s nuclear arsenal, which will also make more radioactive waste — on notice that if lawmakers expand the type of waste accepted at WIPP, the permit will be revoked.

New Mexico Presses US to Develop Other Nuclear Waste Sites

State wants full waste inventory, limits to disposal
WIPP, open since 1999, mining new panels

 | December 20, 2022 news.bloomberglaw.com

New Mexico will be “unwavering” in sticking to proposed new conditions on a federal underground nuclear waste repository, a state official said, including one that revokes the facility’s permit should Congress expand its disposal limit.

The state is demanding the Energy Department and its site contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership LLC, furnish an accurate inventory of all remaining wastes awaiting clean-up and emplacement at the site and an annual report detailing the agency’s progress toward siting another repository in another state.

Fallout from a nuclear past: A new book explores the human toll of “nuclear colonization” in New Mexico

Of the three waves of colonization New Mexico has undergone — Spanish, American and nuclear — the latter is the least explored. And for author Myrriah Gómez, there were personal reasons to reveal the truth about how “nuclear colonization” has altered the state’s past and continues to shape its future.

By Alicia Inez Guzmán Searchlight New Mexico | December 2022 searchlightnm.org

Gómez, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, is the author of  “Nuclear Nuevo México,” a book that explores the history of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the fundamental tension of living in its shadow. Its publication this month by the University of Arizona Press couldn’t be timelier: Los Alamos is currently preparing to build plutonium “pits” that act as triggers in nuclear weapons, putting the lab front and center in an ongoing national debate about nuclear impacts.

“If Spanish colonialism brought Spanish colonizers and U.S. colonialism brought American colonizers,” as Gómez writes in her book, “then nuclear colonialism brought nuclear colonizers, scientists, military personnel, atomic bomb testing, and nuclear waste among them.”

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Nuclear waste permit ‘more stringent’ New Mexico says as feds look to renew for 10 years

NMED Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said the State wanted a permit with stronger regulations moving forward, to better protect people and the environment from the impacts of nuclear waste disposal.

“It will be more stringent, full stop,” Kenney said. “The conditions were adding to it are designed to add more accountability to the whole complex that are sending waste to WIPP.”

By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | December 10, 2022 currentargus.com

Tougher rules for a nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad could be on the way as New Mexico officials sought “more stringent” regulations as the federal government sought to renew its permit with the state for the facility.

The State sought new requirements to prioritize nuclear waste from within New Mexico for disposal, called for an accounting of all of the waste planned for disposal in the next decade and regular updates on federal efforts to find the location for a new repository as conditions of the permit.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy which holds a permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) that must be updated every 10 years.

The facility sees transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste from DOE facilities around the country disposed of via burial in an underground salt formation about 2,000 feet beneath the surface.

Expanded WIPP mission? No shortcuts

“This “bait and switch” tactic, where WIPP is marketed with one mission in mind, then greatly expanded decades later, contradicts DOE’s professed dedication to a consent-based process that, in their own words, “focuses on the needs and concerns of people and communities.”

This expansion represents such a dramatic change in WIPP’s core mission that its managers must reassess safety issues and negotiate a new social contract with the public before moving forward.”

, By Dennis McQuillan and Rodney Ewing | October 29, 2022 santafenewmexican.com

Expanded WIPP mission? No shortcutsThe U.S. Department of Energy proposes a dramatic expansion of the type and amount of radioactive waste for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. In March, community groups rallied outside the state Capitol protesting this planned expansion, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sent the Department of Energy a letter in April that cited “ongoing frustration among New Mexicans regarding the lack of meaningful and transparent public engagement from the DOE on waste clean-up, shipments, and long-term plans for the WIPP.”

While it may seem too late to protest a facility that has operated for decades, citizen activists are right to object, and the governor is right to demand the Department of Energy address the concerns of state citizens.

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Nuclear waste shipments to repository near Carlsbad lagging behind goals for 2022

“So far in FY 2022, most of WIPP’s shipments came from Idaho National Laboratory to fulfill statutory agreements between the DOE and the State of Idaho.”

By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | August 26, 2022 currentargus.com

Nuclear waste managers in New Mexico are about 90 shipments of waste short of their goal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for fiscal year 2022 which ends in about a month.

Records show WIPP accepted 206 shipments so far for FY 2022, which runs from Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022.

During an Aug. 4 meeting before lawmakers, WIPP officials said the facility was targeting 299 shipments this year.

Transuranic (TRU) waste is shipped to WIPP near Carlsbad for permanent disposal in an underground salt deposit about 2,000 feet below the surface.

It comes from U.S. Department of Energy facilities throughout the nation, and is made up of clothing materials and equipment irradiated during nuclear activities.

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NNSA Finally Starts Overdue Los Alamos Lab Environmental Study for Nuclear Weapons Programs That Are Already Underway

Santa Fe, NM – Today, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency with the Department of Energy, released a Notice of Intent to Prepare a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operation of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In its formal notice, NNSA avoids mentioning the elephant in the room, the already predetermined expanded production of plutonium “pits,” the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons. This is in direct contradiction to the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement that federal agencies take a “hard look” at proposed actions before implementation.

Moreover, future pit production is not to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile, but instead is for speculative, untested new-design nuclear weapons for the accelerating nuclear arms race. The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is already spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars to upgrade plutonium facilities and hire more workers for more weapons of mass destruction. This site-wide EIS is a “check off the box” exercise for all the major changes since the last site-wide EIS in 2008. Since then the Lab has fundamentally changed into a nuclear weapons production site as its main mission.

The Department of Energy boosted Lab funding to $4.6 billion in FY 2023 (21% higher than FY 2022), which begins this coming October 1. Of that, $3.6 billion is slated for NNSA’s core nuclear weapons research and production programs, with expanded plutonium pit production taking the biggest slice of the pie at $1.63 billion. The percentage of nuclear weapons funding at LANL has steadily grown as the Lab increasingly banks its future on being a nuclear weapons production site. Today it is 73% of total institutional funding. country.

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STOP FOREVER WIPP! Specific News to WIPP Closing Plans

WIPP: Judge upholds change in how nuke waste is counted. Could keep site open to 2050

“We know it’s part of expanding WIPP. We know what DOE is doing but DOE doesn’t want to publicly admit it and the Environment Department doesn’t want to deal with it…The reason the laws have always put limits on WIPP is that the DOE was supposed to be finding locations for other repositories. There is no other repository and that’s why they don’t want to have a limit on what goes into WIPP.” — Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director at Southwest Research and Information Center.

Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus November 15, 2021 currentargus.com

A New Mexico appellate judge upheld a change in how the volume of nuclear waste disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is counted, shifting the repository from being halfway to capacity to only a third full.

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy requested to modify its WIPP operating permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to change how it counts the amount of waste toward the facility’s statutory limit of 6.2 million cubic feet of transuranic (TRU) waste consisting of clothing materials and equipment irradiated during nuclear activities.

The change was intended to count the inner volume of the waste as opposed to the volume of the outer containers that hold the waste, seeking to avoid counting air between the waste itself and waste drums.

NMED approved the permit modification request (PMR) in 2019, but Albuquerque-based watchdog groups Southwest Research and Information Center and Nuclear Watch New Mexico immediately appealed the decision.

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Energy Department to spend $15.5M to upgrade route from Los Alamos lab to waste site [WIPP]

“Essentially blessing what DOE was going to have to do anyway in order to expand nuclear weapons activities and waste disposal,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “And once again demonstrated the subservience of our state government to the nuclear weapons industry here in New Mexico.”

By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com Santa Fe New Mexican December 6, 2021 santafenewmexican.com

The N.M. 4 and East Jemez Road intersection in the far northwestern corner of Santa Fe County will be improved as part of a $15.5 million upgrade of routes on which Los Alamos National Laboratory transports nuclear waste to an underground disposal site in Southern New Mexico.

The U.S. Energy Department will spend $3.5 million to improve the intersection, which lies just outside Los Alamos County, and another $12 million to upgrade routes it owns and uses mostly to ship transuranic waste — contaminated gloves, clothing, equipment, soil and other items — to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.

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National Academy of Scientists Report

Review of the Department of Energy's Plans for Disposal of Surplus Plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 2020

Action Alerts

Stay Informed of All Permit-Related Happenings at WIPP! Sign Up for Updates:

The New Mexico Environment Department maintains a Facility Mailing List to which you can add your name and address to get the latest information – just email Ricardo Maestas at the New Mexico Environment Department at ricardo.maestas@state.nm.us and ask to be added to the list.  Or mail your request with your mailing address to:

Ricardo Maestas

New Mexico Environment Department-Hazardous Waste Bureau

2905 Rodeo Park East, Bldg. 1

Santa Fe, NM 87505

WIPP also uses the facility mailing list to inform you about opportunities to provide public comments.  NMED provides their list to WIPP.

More Info and signup options:

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HELP US SUPPORT NEW MEXICO’S GOVERNOR IN ACTING TO STOP WIPP EXPANSION!

STOP “FOREVER WIPP!”

The Department of Energy is seeking to modify the nuclear waste permit for southeastern New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Dragging out WIPP’s operations decades past the original 20-year agreement violates the social contract made with New Mexicans. WIPP is being equipped to take the waste that will be generated from production of plutonium pits for nuclear warheads, and it was never supposed to do that. An expansion of WIPP will impact the entire country, not just residents of southeastern New Mexico.

View the videos below for more information, and, if you live in an area that may be endangered by these nuclear waste transportation risks, please consider making your own “This is My Neighborhood” video!

Background Information – Problems with Nuclear Waste


Mixed Waste Landfill Facts

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Quotes

There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
– Noam Chomsky