The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico stopped nuclear waste shipments to the WIPP facility, otherwise known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Sparks flew into a 55 gallon drum of transuranic waste in the Los Alamos Technical Area-55 Plutonium Facility.
The area had to be evacuated following the incident. WIPP also had to follow an accident contingency plan when the facility learned that two of the drums that had this same sparking risk were stored at WIPP in the weeks following the February incident. Since early March, officials at WIPP and Los Alamos state that the two containers pose zero risk.
This incident brings to mind the 2014 closure of WIPP when an improperly packed waste drum leaked radiation into the underground at WIPP.