Susan Montoya reports that U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Wednesday that his Department is committed to reopening the federal government underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico. Moniz made assurances to members of a U.S. Senate subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., that resuming operations at the facility would be done with worker safety in mind. We are doing all that we can, Moniz said. At the very beginning, she insisted that we not set schedules before we understood what the issues were.
Otherwise, safety could be comprised. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is the only permanent repository in the U.S. for radioactive waste such as contaminated gloves, tools and clothing from decades of building nuclear bombs. Moniz said the Department of Energy has a plan for sealing two of the storage rooms at the nuclear dump and for looking at the other barrels that contain some of the same elements that were blamed for the thermal reaction that caused the breach. We need to keep going as fast as we can to make sure that all of those other barrels are safe, he said.
Original withdrawn URL: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/energy-secretary-reiterates-priority-reopening-nuke-dump-29906954
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