 WIP is the world's first deep geologic repository. We ought to see if it can fulfill its mission. It has received more than 10,000 shipments. It has in place more than 80,000 cubic meters of defense transuranic waste, so it's accomplished something. But it's supposed to accommodate more than twice as much waste as is currently there. It's supposed to dispose of the waste, be decontaminated and decommissioned so that we can demonstrate technically and to the public that we actually can do that. Never been done anyplace in the world. This is the most geologically and scientifically studied piece of real estate in the entire United States. The main function is to dispose of transuranic, defense-generated transuranic waste and all of those activities that pertain to that. The Carter administration was trying to figure out what to do with nuclear waste. There was a lot of debate, public discussion. Congress was trying to pass laws. Carter came up with a program of saying, we need nuclear power in this country. We have nuclear weapons. An atomic energy power plant has already proved feasible. The future supplying of electric power to entire cities is far from impossible. So the Carter administration said we need multiple geologic disposal sites in multiple geologic regions. We eventually came on Yucca Mountain. Experts throughout the world agree that the most feasible and safe method for disposing of highly radioactive materials is to store them deep underground. The facilities you see at the surface are only a small fraction of the science going on deep inside the distinctive ridge. We've invested billions of dollars in Yucca Mountain and it's been found to be safe. We've been preparing and planning for Yucca for disposal since 2002. We have high level nuclear waste all over this country and we need it in one centralized location. It's been our policy that that would be Yucca Mountain, an isolated area in Nevada, in the desert 90 miles from Las Vegas, underneath a mountain in the desert in one of the most arid places in this country. This is one of those issues where the federal government then tells the state you're going to take this. That doesn't really work very well. The state of Nevada said we don't want this because we don't believe that you did this in a consensus based fashion. You didn't ask us, you basically just told us. And so then it became a wrangling fight for 25 years. We still don't have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste. Until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost, it's very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that's where American technology comes in. Let's figure out what we're going to do. What this country needs to understand is there's nuclear waste all over the place and next to major population centers and next to major water reserves. I believe that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place for storage. And I know that there's controversy about it and lawsuits and all that. But shouldn't America, a country as smart as we are, be able to find a place to store spent fuel? When 2008 came around and Senator Reid was Senate majority lead, he basically asked to kill this because he didn't think it was science based and this wasn't consensus and we didn't agree to this and all that kind of thing. So it was basically killed. This is a wonderful day for Nevada to make sure that this poisonous substance, the most poisonous substance known to man, isn't going to be hauled through the streets of Las Vegas, Reno, Boulder City and Henderson that go just a few miles outside Las Vegas and be a danger to our water systems, our way of life, including tourism. It's wonderful that it's going to be gone. For more than 30 years the state of New Mexico has said no to being Yucca Mountain, to being a high level waste or a commercial spent fuel repository. So to me, when that subject comes up again, not for the first time, not for the second time, not for the third time, it's come up lots of times and people have always said no way, I kind of say, well what about no? Do people not understand? New Mexico has, as you know, been historically a nuclear state. They're very familiar just from a general base of people in New Mexico of the nuclear industry, what it represents and all facets of that. Right now we have a certain authorization basis that says this is what we are suited for, the disposal of defense generated true waste, and if called upon through the congressional action to look at that, although today we are suited for true waste disposal, we will go through it with the same rigor we did to ensure the safety and the operational efficiency and the environmentally sound way, we would approach it in the same way, but it all starts with congressional action. They have to give this the authorization to do that. Right now WIPP is limited with the kind of waste and with the volume of waste that we can put away. Right now it's limited to defense transuranic waste, which is a mouthful for intermediate level waste from weapons research and production. There are two kinds of transuranic waste supposed to come to WIPP. Contact handled, the kind that's in 55 gallon drum kind of containers and other containers that you or I or anybody can walk right up to and not get a significant dose of radioactivity because the container provides good shielding for current handling of it. And remote handled transuranic waste, which as the name implies, you and I can't walk up to it without getting a significant dose and in fact in some cases a dose that could kill you pretty quickly. So that waste has to be packaged in special lead shielded canisters, taken to a separate special facility of the WIPP site so it can be handled remotely without people actually physically having to handle the canister. This is where the cast is transported into. This door is shut. And what they do is they're lowering it down. You can see that green panel there. They'll lift that lid and it's lowered down into a transfer area, transported over and brought into the facility cask in another room over there. I think what's the best thing to do is to go, we're going to go down the salt shaft and we'll take a cart down there and we'll follow the route that the waste takes to go down to the disposal area, which will be down the East 140 drift all the way down into the intake of panel six. When WIPP was originally conceived, there was the idea to actually have two different levels where we are now and one deeper for defense high level waste. And that was struck from the mission. So we're still at only one level. We could go deeper, we could go higher. The sequence itself is 3000 feet. You went about 2000 feet here. We'll get on this other cart here. Buddy in. So basically what you're seeing there is salt. That's rock. You can hit that with a hammer. It'll ring like a bell. We're going to go through an airlock here and these airlocks, the reason we have them is we have four different ventilation splits and then all those areas are kept separate. Some of it is to control the possibility of if you had a release of some sort of controlling that ventilation and that release. And some of it is just literally to be able to control the air cause you've got a finite amount of air. So the waste would turn here. This isn't going into an active panel. We're headed in into the panel where the waste is disposed. This is the panel itself, but this is typical of these rooms. They're 33 feet wide, minimal 13 feet high. In the case of a room, it's 300 feet long. The RH waste is brought down in this room and then these pistons, the rams, push it into the hole and there's interlocks and there's shielding associated with that to protect the workers. They leave the shield in place and they come in and they pull the piston back and they put that shield plug in place and then they push that in also. So here's the CH waste stack. Here's your contact handled waste. Basically we want to emplace this. It's not storage, it's disposal. Permanent disposal. I guess you could always think that the folks in the future could be smarter than us and find some use, but they would have to recover it. It would just not be retrievable. They'd have to recover it in some way. Basically we want to make sure that we communicate with the future what we've stored underground, that those dangers may be underground. At the end, when we close, the first 100 years is called active institutional controls and during that first 100 years you have guards that are keeping people out and keeping them from drilling. After that it's the passive institutional controls. The passive institutional controls consist of three elements and one of them is the designs, the actual markers that will be left behind after we decommission the site and return it back to public use. So during the first 100 years we would be building the passive institutional controls piece, which is the markers, the rooms, putting on the languages, telling the message. We're talking thousands of years here. We may not have a United States in 3,000 years. It may be split up among several countries. Who's to say? I mean all those possibilities have to be considered. What do you think is in the future for WIP? Do you think it's moving toward high level waste? Well I think we have the Land Withdrawal Act and it basically specifies that we're supposed to take true waste. It would take an act of Congress, if you will, to change that act. I have never seen a scientific or technically convincing reason why salt and WIP could not accommodate high level waste. History has shown that there isn't a quick fix solution to the problem. We need geologic repositories. That's fine. Let's start a long process to come up with that. But WIP in New Mexico, just like Nevada, should be not considered for that because it doesn't consent. New Mexico shouldn't be considered for that because it doesn't consent. Now you can sit around and hope that it's all going to be resolved if the next election breaks right. And that's been exactly the hope for 40 years and it hasn't worked. Now we got a problem. We got a problem in this country that is very, very difficult to solve. We don't know if we got the answers here. If you're looking for the best solution, you will be on that search for the Holy Grail and you will never get there. If you stand around and insist on yukka, yukka, yukka, which people have been insisting on for a long, long time but have not been able to pull it off, we think the result of that is an impasse, a failure to solve the problem. Where do you go?
 WIP is the world's first deep geologic repository.
 We ought to see if it can fulfill its mission.
 It has received more than 10,000 shipments.
 It has in place more than 80,000 cubic meters of defense transuranic waste, so it's accomplished
 something.
 But it's supposed to accommodate more than twice as much waste as is currently there.
 It's supposed to dispose of the waste, be decontaminated and decommissioned so that
 we can demonstrate technically and to the public that we actually can do that.
 Never been done anyplace in the world.
 This is the most geologically and scientifically studied piece of real estate in the entire
 United States.
 The main function is to dispose of transuranic, defense-generated transuranic waste and all
 of those activities that pertain to that.
 The Carter administration was trying to figure out what to do with nuclear waste.
 There was a lot of debate, public discussion.
 Congress was trying to pass laws.
 Carter came up with a program of saying, we need nuclear power in this country.
 We have nuclear weapons.
 An atomic energy power plant has already proved feasible.
 The future supplying of electric power to entire cities is far from impossible.
 So the Carter administration said we need multiple geologic disposal sites in multiple
 geologic regions.
 We eventually came on Yucca Mountain.
 Experts throughout the world agree that the most feasible and safe method for disposing
 of highly radioactive materials is to store them deep underground.
 The facilities you see at the surface are only a small fraction of the science going
 on deep inside the distinctive ridge.
 We've invested billions of dollars in Yucca Mountain and it's been found to be safe.
 We've been preparing and planning for Yucca for disposal since 2002.
 We have high level nuclear waste all over this country and we need it in one centralized
 location.
 It's been our policy that that would be Yucca Mountain, an isolated area in Nevada, in the
 desert 90 miles from Las Vegas, underneath a mountain in the desert in one of the most
 arid places in this country.
 This is one of those issues where the federal government then tells the state you're going
 to take this.
 That doesn't really work very well.
 The state of Nevada said we don't want this because we don't believe that you did this
 in a consensus based fashion.
 You didn't ask us, you basically just told us.
 And so then it became a wrangling fight for 25 years.
 We still don't have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste.
 Until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost, it's very hard
 to see nuclear as a part of our future.
 But that's where American technology comes in.
 Let's figure out what we're going to do.
 What this country needs to understand is there's nuclear waste all over the place and next
 to major population centers and next to major water reserves.
 I believe that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place for storage.
 And I know that there's controversy about it and lawsuits and all that.
 But shouldn't America, a country as smart as we are, be able to find a place to store
 spent fuel?
 When 2008 came around and Senator Reid was Senate majority lead, he basically asked to
 kill this because he didn't think it was science based and this wasn't consensus and we didn't
 agree to this and all that kind of thing.
 So it was basically killed.
 This is a wonderful day for Nevada to make sure that this poisonous substance, the most
 poisonous substance known to man, isn't going to be hauled through the streets of Las Vegas,
 Reno, Boulder City and Henderson that go just a few miles outside Las Vegas and be a danger
 to our water systems, our way of life, including tourism.
 It's wonderful that it's going to be gone.
 For more than 30 years the state of New Mexico has said no to being Yucca Mountain, to being
 a high level waste or a commercial spent fuel repository.
 So to me, when that subject comes up again, not for the first time, not for the second
 time, not for the third time, it's come up lots of times and people have always said
 no way, I kind of say, well what about no?
 Do people not understand?
 New Mexico has, as you know, been historically a nuclear state.
 They're very familiar just from a general base of people in New Mexico of the nuclear
 industry, what it represents and all facets of that.
 Right now we have a certain authorization basis that says this is what we are suited
 for, the disposal of defense generated true waste, and if called upon through the congressional
 action to look at that, although today we are suited for true waste disposal, we will
 go through it with the same rigor we did to ensure the safety and the operational efficiency
 and the environmentally sound way, we would approach it in the same way, but it all starts
 with congressional action.
 They have to give this the authorization to do that.
 Right now WIPP is limited with the kind of waste and with the volume of waste that we
 can put away.
 Right now it's limited to defense transuranic waste, which is a mouthful for intermediate
 level waste from weapons research and production.
 There are two kinds of transuranic waste supposed to come to WIPP.
 Contact handled, the kind that's in 55 gallon drum kind of containers and other containers
 that you or I or anybody can walk right up to and not get a significant dose of radioactivity
 because the container provides good shielding for current handling of it.
 And remote handled transuranic waste, which as the name implies, you and I can't walk
 up to it without getting a significant dose and in fact in some cases a dose that could
 kill you pretty quickly.
 So that waste has to be packaged in special lead shielded canisters, taken to a separate
 special facility of the WIPP site so it can be handled remotely without people actually
 physically having to handle the canister.
 This is where the cast is transported into.
 This door is shut.
 And what they do is they're lowering it down.
 You can see that green panel there.
 They'll lift that lid and it's lowered down into a transfer area, transported over and
 brought into the facility cask in another room over there.
 I think what's the best thing to do is to go, we're going to go down the salt shaft
 and we'll take a cart down there and we'll follow the route that the waste takes to go
 down to the disposal area, which will be down the East 140 drift all the way down into the
 intake of panel six.
 When WIPP was originally conceived, there was the idea to actually have two different
 levels where we are now and one deeper for defense high level waste.
 And that was struck from the mission.
 So we're still at only one level.
 We could go deeper, we could go higher.
 The sequence itself is 3000 feet.
 You went about 2000 feet here.
 We'll get on this other cart here.
 Buddy in.
 So basically what you're seeing there is salt.
 That's rock.
 You can hit that with a hammer.
 It'll ring like a bell.
 We're going to go through an airlock here and these airlocks, the reason we have them
 is we have four different ventilation splits and then all those areas are kept separate.
 Some of it is to control the possibility of if you had a release of some sort of controlling
 that ventilation and that release.
 And some of it is just literally to be able to control the air cause you've got a finite
 amount of air.
 So the waste would turn here.
 This isn't going into an active panel.
 We're headed in into the panel where the waste is disposed.
 This is the panel itself, but this is typical of these rooms.
 They're 33 feet wide, minimal 13 feet high.
 In the case of a room, it's 300 feet long.
 The RH waste is brought down in this room and then these pistons, the rams, push it
 into the hole and there's interlocks and there's shielding associated with that to protect
 the workers.
 They leave the shield in place and they come in and they pull the piston back and they
 put that shield plug in place and then they push that in also.
 So here's the CH waste stack.
 Here's your contact handled waste.
 Basically we want to emplace this.
 It's not storage, it's disposal.
 Permanent disposal.
 I guess you could always think that the folks in the future could be smarter than us and
 find some use, but they would have to recover it.
 It would just not be retrievable.
 They'd have to recover it in some way.
 Basically we want to make sure that we communicate with the future what we've stored underground,
 that those dangers may be underground.
 At the end, when we close, the first 100 years is called active institutional controls and
 during that first 100 years you have guards that are keeping people out and keeping them
 from drilling.
 After that it's the passive institutional controls.
 The passive institutional controls consist of three elements and one of them is the designs,
 the actual markers that will be left behind after we decommission the site and return
 it back to public use.
 So during the first 100 years we would be building the passive institutional controls
 piece, which is the markers, the rooms, putting on the languages, telling the message.
 We're talking thousands of years here.
 We may not have a United States in 3,000 years.
 It may be split up among several countries.
 Who's to say?
 I mean all those possibilities have to be considered.
 What do you think is in the future for WIP?
 Do you think it's moving toward high level waste?
 Well I think we have the Land Withdrawal Act and it basically specifies that we're supposed
 to take true waste.
 It would take an act of Congress, if you will, to change that act.
 I have never seen a scientific or technically convincing reason why salt and WIP could not
 accommodate high level waste.
 History has shown that there isn't a quick fix solution to the problem.
 We need geologic repositories.
 That's fine.
 Let's start a long process to come up with that.
 But WIP in New Mexico, just like Nevada, should be not considered for that because it doesn't
 consent.
 New Mexico shouldn't be considered for that because it doesn't consent.
 Now you can sit around and hope that it's all going to be resolved if the next election
 breaks right.
 And that's been exactly the hope for 40 years and it hasn't worked.
 Now we got a problem.
 We got a problem in this country that is very, very difficult to solve.
 We don't know if we got the answers here.
 If you're looking for the best solution, you will be on that search for the Holy Grail
 and you will never get there.
 If you stand around and insist on yukka, yukka, yukka, which people have been insisting on
 for a long, long time but have not been able to pull it off, we think the result of that
 is an impasse, a failure to solve the problem.
 Where do you go?