|
In the remote desert of southeastern New Mexico, salt beds nearly a half-mile underground store radioactive waste. But the material has to get there safely – and that’s where MDE plays a key role.
Over two days in September, eighteen-wheelers carrying radioactive payloads rumbled through Western Maryland. It was the first shipment of its kind to go through Maryland. MDE teamed with federal, state and local authorities to be ready for the worst – and the trucks made it through the state without incident.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico was built in the 1980s to store radioactive waste from the nuclear defense program, and it has served as a safe and permanent storage location for that waste since 1999. Nuclear defense program waste is material contaminated with artificially made radioactive elements that were primarily produced from recycling spent nuclear fuel or from plutonium that was used to fabricate nuclear weapons.
In September, the Department of Energy shipped five containers of radioactive waste from the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory near Pittsburgh to the New Mexico facility. To use interstate highways best-suited for the trucks, they followed a route that brought them through Garrett, Allegany, and Washington Counties. Each truck carried on its flat bed a lead-lined cask with three 55-gallon drums of waste.
To ensure that federal, state and local responders are adequately trained to respond to transportation incidents involving radioactive material, the Department of Energy regularly provides a training course to first responders in Maryland. With coordination from MDE’s Radiological Health Program, additional training was held in Western Maryland for state police, sheriffs, county officials and first responders along the shipment route.
In an abundance of caution, the Radiological Health Program activated the MDE Accident Assessment Center and dispatched a nuclear emergency response vehicle with a health physicist to Western Maryland to reduce the response time in the event of an incident. In addition, the RHP coordinated and maintained communications with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, Maryland State Police, state officials in West Virginia and the Department of Energy's transportation communications center in Carlsbad, New Mexico. MDE tracked the shipments using a computerized satellite system, monitored the road conditions using the Maryland Department of Transportation’s live traffic cameras and tracked weather systems.
MDE will continue to work with the Department of Energy on any future shipments through Maryland.
|
