NEW MEXICO: ‘CONSEQUENCES’ COMING TO DOE FOR WIPP COMMUNICATION LAPSE

There will be “consequences” for the Department of Energy for a lack of communication with New Mexico over radiation monitor readings in the initial days after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant release, New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn said last week. “It’s totally unacceptable for the Department of Energy to wait five days from when they first detected that there was a reading at Station B outside of the ventilation system to inform the state that they had a reading at that station,” Flynn told WC Monitor. “I can assure you that there will certainly be consequences for that lapse. The state must be given information immediately. … We’ve already made it very clear to the Department of Energy that it was a mistake that simply never should have happened and that it was totally unacceptable.” 

 

He said the state hasn’t yet decided what action to take and that it is too early to tell what other actions may be taken in response to any possible violations at WIPP related to the radiation release. “We need to understand more before we start to figure out what consequences there will be,” Flynn said. He added: “Once we’ve identified the root cause, we then move to identifying a path forward. You can’t really identify a path forward until you look back on what happened here with a critical eye. And that’s the time that we will start to look from our perspective whether there were violations of our permit and what the consequences of those violations will be.”