Researcher(s):
Marissa Weileder Jack Kamysz Alannah Balfour
ENVS course(s): 330 Initiated: February 2018 Completed: April 2018 Go to project site
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Nuclear waste is a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission that occurs in power plants all across the globe. Exposure to such waste can be harmful to both humans and the environment. With varying, but usually long half lives of radioactive waste, these contaminated byproducts are kept stored far away from the general public and located in geological repositories that reduce the risk of possible exposure. With this in mind, we turned our attention to New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot-Plant (WIPP) to study the link between public health and the nuclear waste stored there, using the 2014 explosion as our focus point. Since exposure to radiation can lead to cancer, we looked into the rates of lung and bronchus cancer reported for Eddy county and New Mexico, which is where WIPP is located, to see if the explosion at the site led to any negative health and environmental impacts. This information is then compared to national averages gathered and provided by the American Cancer Society to determine if there is a discernable difference in the number of cancer cases in New Mexico residents versus the general public. We concluded that we could not reasonably say that there was any correlation between the number of cancer cases in New Mexico and the 2014 explosion at the WIPP, which led us to think about some broader implications like how the operations and explosion at the WIPP might impact future nuclear waste repositories, like the ones proposed for Yucca Mountain and the South of France.
Throughout this research project, we used these questions to guide our work:
Framing Question--How do the current methods of nuclear waste management impact public human?
Focus Question--In what ways, if any, has the storage of nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico resulted in anomalous health metrics for communities in surrounding areas?