State environmental regulators have cleared the way for work to continue on a multimillion-dollar ventilation shaft at the federal government’s underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico.
Ventilation has been an issue since 2014, when a radiation release contaminated parts of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government’s cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S.