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brine, brine water, burying nuclear waste, combustible materials, corrosion, deep geological disposal facility, flammable gas, GDF, GDF failure, hydrogen gas, leaks, methane gas, military waste, New Mexico, nuclear dump, nuclear energy, nuclear facility, nuclear labs, nuclear power, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons, plutonium, salt, salt collapse, salt mine, salt water, transport of nuclear waste, transuranic waste, USA, water leaks, weeping, WIPP, WIPP explosion, WIPP fire, WIPP leak
“If we contaminate our water supply, what is the meaning of national security, Dr. Maurice Weisberg, Radiologist, The WIPP Trail, 1989”
In this interview with Don Hancock re WIPP, “Insight New Mexico“: http://youtu.be/l_9nsmK8IMY, he mentions 16 or 17 Curies of Plutonium and Americium emitted from the drum, i.e. 629 billion becquerels.
The situation at WIPP seems to be like a murder in plain sight, which no one sees. All of the information is there. Not only was it designed to fail due to salt creep slowly closing up the rooms, which would eventually crush the containers and increase any gas pressures because less volume is greater pressure, https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/roof-fall-in-wipp-problems-just-beginning-this-is-what-happens-when-you-put-waste-in-salt/ but it’s even worse. And, the problems have been known for over a quarter of a century, as discussed in “The WIPP Trail” documentary. Large amounts of the waste were known to have combustible materials. Furthermore, it’s never been dry and suffered from seeping, leakage from the beginning. The brine (salt) water speeds up corrosion and the creation of flammable gases. It speeds up collapse of the rooms, which are made of salt, and will burst the canisters. It risks contaminating water supplies more quickly than planned, especially in karst terrain.
Using this information to do research, we found that there were gas releases from drill holes, a gas pocket, and even monitoring of “stalactites”, at the beginning. Sandia lab called the water seepage weeping, but the documentation looks like this is an understatement.
Stalactites in Nearby Carlsbad Caverns, Lower Cave, NPS Photo
More on WIPP stalactites here: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/wipp-halite-nacl-stalactites-from-brine-water-in-nuclear-waste-dump-no-joke/
In 1989, people were concerned about the transport of the radioactive materials to WIPP, and the risk of accident, especially traveling through towns, along with the lack of promised infrastructure improvements. The documentary additionally discusses what we had suspected. The choice of location is believed to have been political: because many of the people were poor, Latino, and Native American. The people had the reputation of not complaining. The Native Americans were fearful due to their dependency on the American government. All of this and much more is found in this thorough and gripping documentary. If you cannot watch it for 58 minutes, you can watch it in segments. However, if you watch 10 or 15 minutes you probably won’t be able to stop until the end.
“The WIPP Trail” Documentary, narrated by Robert Redford: http://youtu.be/pJjH7m_7tkE [1] 
“The WIPP Trail” 1989, Copyright October, 1990 CC-BY-NC-SA Alternative Information Network Watch it here: http://youtu.be/pJjH7m_7tkE
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991, p. 2-3
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991. p. 2-2
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991, p. 2-4
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991, p. 4-1
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991, p. 4-2
Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991, p. 4-3, Figure 4-1
Stalactite growth monitored and gas release; gas pocket, A-7 (p. 54), Table A-1 “Gas pocket at 14.0 m. Brine seeped from hole after drill rods were broken at end of run at depth of 5 m. Probable source was anhydrite ‘a’. Stalactite growth monitored as part of BSEP from 5/85 to 2/86.”
A-13 (p. 60), Table A-1 Brine Sampling and Eval, 1989, DOE-WIPP, Deal et. al., 1991
“BRINE SAMPLING AND EVALUATION PROGRAM 1989 REPORT DOE-WIPP 91-009 July 1991, D. E. Deal – IT Corporation R. J. Abitz – IT Corporation D. S. Belski – Westinghouse Electric Corporation J. B. Clark – IT Corporation M. E. Crawley – IT Corporation M. L. Martin – IT Corporation, This report was prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Engineering and Repository Technology, Department of the Management and Operating Contractor, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, under Contract No. DE-AC04-86AL31950“. http://www.wipp.energy. gov/library/Information_Repository_A/Supplemental_Information/Deal%20et%20al%201991a.pdf (Emphasis added; Westinghouse was still an American firm.)
Actinide (III) Solubility in WIPP Brine, Borkowski et. al, 2009 “LA-UR 09-03222 LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY CARLSBAD OPERATIONS LCO-ACP-08, Revision 0 Actinide (III) Solubility in WIPP Brine: Data Summary and Recommendations M. Borkowski, J. F. Lucchini, M. K. Richmann and D. T. Reed” http://www.epa. gov/rpdweb00/docs/wipp/recertification09/cra2009_doeletter2_enc2-1.pdf (Emphasis added)
Krumhansl et. al. 1991, Intergranular Fluid Compositions from WIPP SE NM” http://www.wipp. energy.gov/library/CRA/CRA-2014/References/Others/Krumhansl_Kimbal_Stein_1991_Intergranular_Fluid_Compositions_from_WIPP_SE_NM.pdf
“In the 1992 WIPP performance assessment (PA), SNL used a random model and a block model to generate probability distribution functions for the occurrence of brine reservoirs under the WIPP. These models appear to reasonably bound the expected range of probabilities. Results developed in this study closely reproduce the results presented in the 1992 PA. However, our analyses of approach taken in the 1992 PA indicate that consideration of the entire repository as an aggregate rather than considering the repository on a panel-by-panel basis can result in different proabilities when using the block model. The fraction of panels 1 and 8 (i.e., those nearest WIPP-12) underlain by brine ranges from 50 to 88%, while for panels 5, 6, 7, and 9, the fraction ranges from 10 to 50%. Probability distributions for the remote handled (RH) TRU waste disposal areas were very similar to those for the main disposal areas.” “Technical Report Review of TDEM Analysis of WIPP Brine Pockets Prepared by: S. Cohen & Associates, Inc. 1355 Beverly Road McLean, Virginia 22101 under Contract No. 68D70073 Work Assignment No. 1-01 Prepared for: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Radiation and Indoor Air 401 M Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20460 Thomas Peake Work Assignment Manager April 1998” p. 2 http://www.wipp. energy.gov/Library/CRA/CRA-2014/References/Others/Peake_1998_Review_of_TDEM_Analysis_of_WIPP_Brine_Pockets.pdf
Dr. Digby MacDonald explains chloride as a major oxidizer, which disrupts the protective passivity layer on metals, thus speeding up corrosion. (Short version, explains from 1 min to 1 min 50 sec): http://youtu.be/ah_Y3Z5rRvc Chloride is in both Sodium Chloride and Potassium Chloride (salts). Potassium Bromide would have the same effect, since bromide is a strong oxidizer. Not only can the metal containers corrode but the transuranic radioactive waste corrodes.
Note
[1] “The WIPP Trail” 1989, Copyright October, 1990 CC-BY-NC-SA Alternative Information Network, Producer: Frank Morrow, Narrated by Robert Redford, Co-hosts: Frank Morrow and Doug Kellner, Researcher: Mike Jankowski, Technical adviser: Brian Koenigsdorf” https://archive.org/details/AV_427-THE_WIPP_TRAIL
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/24/robert_redford_on_how_truth_telling
WE MAY ADD MORE INFORMATION IF TIME ALLOWS. WE HAD TWO MORE THINGS TO ADD, BUT CANNOT QUICKLY LOCATE THEM AND WIPP IS BACK IN THE NEWS NOW. The anniversary of Three Mile Island is this weekend and there is a comment period ending on the 30th on degradation of concrete at nuclear power stations – also sped up by sodium and potassium chloride.
Mining Awareness + 
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