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SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

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The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

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Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Watchdog Groups Call Reopening of Nuclear Waste Isolation Plant Premature

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Tuesday, January 10, 2017   

CARLSBAD, N.M. – Nuclear watchdog groups are criticizing the decision to reopen the underground storage areas of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, also known as WIPP, which closed after an accidental release of radioactive particles in February of 2014. In that incident, a drum of nuclear waste burst and contaminated the area, affecting 21 workers.

Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste program at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, says the decision to reopen the facility is premature.

"The areas that they're putting waste in is contaminated, there's not enough ventilation in the mine and there are extreme problems with what is typically called ground control, what citizens think of as ceilings collapsing and floors heaving," he explained.

Hancock notes that these problems have not been fixed, and just last November tens of tons of salt collapsed in one of the rooms being considered for future storage of radioactive waste.

Governor Susana Martinez attended the ribbon cutting, noting that her administration secured a $74 million settlement from the Department of Energy after this incident. Much of the money went to maintaining the roads around the facility in Carlsbad and near Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Jay Coughlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, notes that the feds paid no fines after the spill. And he thinks the storage areas at WIPP are still dangerous for workers.

"Operations at WIPP will remain significantly curtailed for the foreseeable future because of the contamination down there," he said. "You know, workers are having to work in full protective suits and things are just going to be slow."

The facility was built to accept what's called transuranic waste, that is nuclear material that is a byproduct of man-made radioactive elements. Hancock says within the next month officials at WIPP will decide which nuclear sites will be allowed to start shipping waste into the facility, at the rate of up to five shipments a week.


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