Officials investigating a mysterious radiation leak from the US government's underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico have turned their focus to Los Alamos National Laboratory, a state regulator has said.
New Mexico Environment Department General Counsel Jeff Kendall said the US Department of Energy's accident investigation team has been at the lab for about three weeks.
A canister shipped from Los Alamos to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad burst in the mine on February 14, contaminating 22 workers and closing the nation's only permanent repository for waste from decades of building nuclear bombs.
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Officials also are investigating whether hundreds of other barrels from Los Alamos that are currently stored at the nuclear waste dump, Los Alamos and a facility in Texas are at risk of bursting.
Kendall said he expects administrative actions and fines will be levied against the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and Los Alamos as more information is uncovered.
Initial probes by federal regulators into the leak and an underground truck fire six days earlier identified a host of management and safety shortcomings. Communications between Los Alamos and the contractor that packaged its waste for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have raised questions about oversight by the lab.
The waste was packed with cat litter to absorb moisture, and teams of scientists are trying to determine whether a switch from inorganic to organic litter is to blame for helping fuel a chemical reaction.
Kendall made the comments during a New Mexico Court of Appeals hearing.
Asked if it was possible the nuclear dump would never reopen, Eileen McDonough, a Justice Department attorney representing the Department of Energy, told the judges "I don't foresee that. Nobody is contemplating a closure of WIPP."
But she estimated it would be at least 2016 before it could reopen.
