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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Lee C. Cadwallader, Cory S. Miller, Kathryn A. McCarthy
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 599-603
Safety and Environment (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper discusses the possible forms of injury to maintenance personnel that could arise from a cryostat air ingress event. The results of a thermal-hydraulic analysis of several cryostat breach sizes show the time scales for possible injury and the severity of air pressure transients in the rooms near the cryostat. Energy sources were reviewed to identify worker safety concerns in a cryostat vacuum breach event. The room air pressure drop in medium and large breaches is the most important worker safety concern. Standard vacuum safety techniques are reducing time in proximity, maintaining an exclusion area, and employing some form of barrier or shielding between workers and vacuum reservoirs. Other suggested safety techniques discussed here are engineering controls (doors that can be easily opened under differential pressure), and administrative controls (buddy system, evacuation plan). These techniques are easy to implement in early design stages.