Los Alamos lab turns to Texas to temporarily store radioactive waste

By Joseph J. Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a temporary home in Texas for roughly 1,000 barrels of radioactive junk left in limbo after a radiation leak led to a prolonged shutdown of New Mexico’s only nuclear waste disposal facility. Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, said earlier this month it had been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation’s only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad. The repository has remained closed while the U.S. Department of Energy investigates the origins of a radiation leak that occurred there on February 14, exposing at least 17 workers to radioactive contamination.