APNewsBreak: US energy boss lauds opening of nuke repository

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It was the determination of workers over nearly three years and pure ingenuity that allowed the nation's only underground repository for low-level nuclear waste to recover from a radiation release, the head of the U.S. Energy Department said.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told The Associated Press that resuming work at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico means the nation's multibillion-dollar cleanup of waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research is one step closer to getting back on track.

The repository was shuttered in February 2014 after a chemical reaction inside a drum of inappropriately packed waste caused the lid to burst, contaminating some of the disposal vaults, corridors and air shafts that make up the facility.

Moniz acknowledged that the closure has caused a backlog of radioactive waste to build up at sites around the country — from northern New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where the basic materials used to fabricate nuclear weapons were produced.