Did short cuts on safety testing waste barrels contribute to WIPP's radioactivity leak?

As reported by the Albuquerque Journal, short cuts on safety to save money -- doing away with headgas space between a waste barrel's contents and its lid -- is a potential explanation for the Feb. 14th radioactivity release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, although this has yet to be determined. The concern is that inappropriate gases pent up in a waste barrel may have breached a lid, releasing radioactivity that then escaped up WIPP's ventilation system to blow downwind and fallout. WIPP's been closed since.

Environmental watchdogs and the State of New Mexico resisted the regulatory rollbacks at the time. The rollbacks were pushed by U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), perhaps the single most pro-nuclear Member of Congress of the past generation.

An investigative team set to descend into WIPP's depths to try to get to the bottom of the radioactivity release has been postponed, due to the delayed arrival of needed radiation monitors. The workers will have to take elaborate precautions against radioactive exposures while underground, due to the ultra-hazardous nature of transuranics. A single speck of plutonium in the human lung can initiate cancer over time.