WIPP Giddyup

So there is not enough money to clean up Los Alamos.  Story in the Albuquerque Journal.

But that's apparently a separate issue entirely from those of expanding nuclear waste dump sites in New Mexico.  The more the merrier.  From the Las Vegas Sun:

“Senator Domenici today dropped a bombshell on the DOE when he said we should be looking at New Mexico as an alternative to Nevada for high level nuclear waste disposal,” Berkley said in a statement. Domenici suggested the type of geography found in his home state could be considered for a repository of waste from utility plants alongside.

Oh yeah, and don't worry about the waste because we're going to recycle now. How happy and green is that?

Those who comment about how great nukes are over at NEI Nuclear Notes now spin-on about recycling for all that clean energy and this bit about how New Mexicans loved the idea of WIPP all along.  It was much desired pork - just like prisons. 

There was a time when if a state needed to build a new prison that communities would fight tooth and nail not to get picked to host it out of concerns over the city's image (in the form of lower property values) and public safety (what would happen if a vicious cat molester were to escape?). Nowadays municipalities bite and scratch to get chosen because of the jobs and business they bring in. Somehow the process of choosing a spent fuel repository became structured to guarantee state opposition. On the other hand, to my knowledge WIPP was built with a minimum of state fuss. I wonder if the difference is that Pete Domenici was familiar with Tom Sawyer and his picket fence and packaged WIPP as an opportunity (read "pork barrel project") rather than as something that was going to be foisted on them.

All in the packaging.