{"id":16630,"date":"2014-02-04T15:30:45","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T19:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/?p=16630"},"modified":"2021-11-10T16:43:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T20:43:03","slug":"waste-isolation-pilot-plant-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/waste-isolation-pilot-plant-monitoring.htm","title":{"rendered":"Scientists ensure radioactive material in Waste Isolation Pilot Plant stays there"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Hundreds of millions of years ago, an ancient sea covered parts of the western U.S. Reaching all the way to present-day Kansas, its salty waters formed what is today the Permian Basin, a region rich in oil and natural gas. As the seawater receded, massive beds of salt were left behind that still support mines in the area.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The beds &#8211; now deep underground &#8211; are perfect for storing radioactive waste.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWe\u2019re taking drums of radioactive material currently being stored on concrete pads and moving it 2,150 feet underground,\u201d said Russell Hardy, director of New Mexico State University\u2019s Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center that monitors around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the world\u2019s only deep geological repository for defense-related transuranic waste. \u201cThey\u2019re placed in rooms mined from the ancient salt beds, which will encapsulate them over time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There are routine checks on soil, air and water quality around the plant to make sure \u201cwhat goes down there stays down there,\u201d as Hardy says.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The salty earth around the facility is sampled biannually from two locations (16 samples in total). They\u2019re looking for cesium, plutonium and strontium, according to Punam Thakur, head of the radiochemistry program at the plant. Each soil sample is passed through a gamma spectrometer to make sure radionuclide levels are low.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For the air, high-volume samplers track aerosols in the ambient air near the site, along with low-volume samplers that continuously collect air from within the repository year-round, says Thakur. Low-volume filters are retrieved every day. Aerosol filters are taken in every two to three weeks. Each is evaluated for the same target elements. Though the primary concern is a radioactive element in the air, concentrations of particulate matter are monitored as well.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The team also keeps tabs on three nearby lakes, but doesn\u2019t monitor them nearly as often. \u201cWe take a boat, go out once every two years and take samples of water a few feet below the surface as well as from the lake bottoms,\u201d said Hardy. But sediment sampling is more important because radioactive material will settle in the lakebed or surrounding soil.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_16631\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16631\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16631\" alt=\"Soil sampling around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (Credit: Russell Hardy\/CEMRC)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/WIPPBodySoil.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/WIPPBodySoil.jpg 600w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/WIPPBodySoil-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-16631\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Soil sampling around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (Credit: Russell Hardy\/CEMRC)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cOnce you detonate a nuclear device, the fallout will fall onto the ground,\u201d said Thakur. \u201cMost of the time, it winds up deep in the sediment or soil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Almost all plutonium that has been introduced into the atmosphere can be found in the surface soil. Radioactive materials bind with the soil and remain there until disturbed by the wind, rain or some other driver of erosion.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The plant has been operational for 14 years, and scientists have yet to see any evidence of a release. But that\u2019s not to say the team hasn\u2019t seen some blips on the radar.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIn those situations, we collect the results and get them to the public in 24 hours. The research is done in eight hours and then we get a report out in 10 hours. These are tedious procedures. They can sometimes take a week in normal times,\u201d said Thakur.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Since every release of plutonium has a unique signature, it\u2019s possible to know exactly where it came from. \u00a0Everything they\u2019ve seen has come from global fallout, \u00a0including effects from the 2011 meltdown at Japan\u2019s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of our surprises after Fukushima was that it only took three days to travel across the ocean,\u201d said Hardy.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>Top image:\u00a0High-volume ambient air sampling at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (Credit: Russell Hardy\/CEMRC)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Routine checks on soil, air and water quality around this New Mexico radioactive repository make sure \u201cwhat goes down there stays down there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-16630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-atmosphere","tag-featured"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Scientists ensure radioactive material in Waste Isolation Pilot Plant stays there<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Environmental monitoring around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a radioactive waste repository, makes sure \u201cwhat goes down there stays down there.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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