"Teams Set To Inspect New Mexico Nuclear Waste Site After Leak"

"Inspection teams were set to venture into an underground nuclear waste disposal vault in New Mexico on Wednesday to look for the source of a radiation leak nearly seven weeks ago that exposed 21 workers and forced a shutdown of the facility.

The planned inspection would mark the first time since the mishap that workers have been sent deep into the salt caverns of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, where drums of plutonium-tainted refuse from nuclear weapons factories and laboratories are buried.

The unexplained leak of radiation, a small amount of which escaped to the surface, ranked as the worst accident and one of the few blemishes on the plant's safety record since it opened in 1999."

Joseph L. Kolb reports for Reuters April 3, 2014.

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"Crews Make First Trip Into WIPP" (Albuquerque Journal)