Firefighters scrambled Wednesday to contain a blaze at a US nuclear waste plant in New Mexico, while underground staff were evacuated and some taken to hospital, officials said.
Firefighters scrambled Wednesday to contain a blaze at a
US nuclear waste plant in New Mexico, while underground staff were
evacuated and some taken to hospital, officials said. The
blaze erupted on an underground vehicle carrying salt at the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, the US
Department of Energy (DoE) said in a statement. "Emergency
response teams are responding to an operational emergency" at the
plant, which is used to dispose of radioactive waste left from making
nuclear weapons.
"All underground personnel are
accounted for and have been safely evacuated to the surface," it said,
adding: "There is no waste in the vicinity of the fire."
All
waste handling operations have been suspended while "multiple
employees" were transported to a local hospital for potential smoke
inhalation after the blaze, which erupted around 11:00 am, it said.
The
site is "the nation's first repository for the permanent disposal of
defense-generated transuranic radioactive waste left from research and
production of nuclear weapons," according to the DoE.
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