"Repository’s Future Uncertain, But New Mexico Town Still Believes"

"CARLSBAD, N.M. — On Feb. 5, 2014, a truck hauling salt caught fire deep in the maze of tunnels of the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste dump. Thick, black smoke forced an evacuation of workers as it billowed to the surface through exit shafts.

“I can’t even explain the feeling I felt,” said Rick Fuentes, a local union boss and waste handler who was busy working above ground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant that day. “You look out, you see smoke coming from the underground, and the first thing you’re thinking is you hope everybody in the underground comes out.”

It was the first major accident since the plant, known as WIPP, had opened in 1999, but it was about to get worse. Just nine days later, on Valentine’s Day, a 55-gallon drum of radioactive waste burst open. Radiation flooded the underground salt caverns, exposing more than 20 workers and filtering up into the open air a half-mile above."

Patrick Malone reports for the Santa Fe New Mexican February 14, 2015.