NH #171: Southwest Radiation Leak Update – Hancock on WIPP, Hadden on WCS

INTERVIEWS:

Focus on the American southwest and the fallout from the Valentine’s Day  radwaste container explosion at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP site in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

• Don Hancock, Executive Director of Southwest Information and Resource Center, corrects some misinformation about radiation levels surrounding the site, then gives his take on the “plans” to fix the problem and the recent shake-up at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that removed four managers in charge of transuranic waste — meaning the stuff that exploded at WIPP– from their positions.
• Karen Hadden, Executive Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development or SEED Coalition  in Texas, brings us up to date on water woes and contamination possibilities at the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) storage facility in Andrews Texas.  This is where the waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory that could not be sent to WIPP ended up.

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:

• Yes, it’s soup… but is it art?  Is it mmm mmm good or death warmed over?  Deadly Japanese hospitality offered at the Frieze Art Fair in London when conceptual artists United Brothers – originally from Iwaki in Fukushima – fly their mother in to make free soup out of Fukushima vegetables.  Isn’t there a zombie movie that starts like this?

PLUS:

• Fuel rods losing uranium pellets at North Anna in Virginia
• Radiation hot spots found on ocean floor within 25 kilometers/15 miles of Fukushima
• Exelon asks Illinois for a mere $580 million to keep its nuclear reactors running
• Pakistan wants a larger place at the international nuclear table – what could go wrong?