Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

If you happen to by curious about my irregular frequenting of the board seemed to have dropped off completely, I'll give a short rundown why. I work at a nuclear waste disposal site called WIPP, you may have seen it in the news. Basically we take the governments cold war era nuclear waste with elements beyond uranium mixed with run of the mill hazardous waste and throw it in a salt mine 2,000 ft underground where it will live out most of it's half-life untouched and forgotten. Last valentines day we had a radiation release (tiny tiny amount. Only 10 smoke detector's worth of Americium escaped, most city blocks have more nuclear material than that). Since then it's been full of 6 day work weeks trying to get a handle on things. We're not accepting new waste which is throwing a wrench in lots of plans for places (national labs) that have agreements to remove this legacy trans-uranic waste from their sites. The good news is the salt mine everything is stored in is fine. Which means something in one of the waste containers (for lack of a better word for an unknown) burped in some manner. Still, I'll throw up a couple links if your curious.

One of the reasonable write-ups of extent of public danger
http://www.abqjournal.com/386616/opinio ... ehill.html

For up-to-date news
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/news/wipp-news.html

And then just google 'WIPP release' for a laugh at some doomsday responses.

I've been lurking and trying to keep up. I'm really excited with mhackney's findings on the E3D, and have some serious testing I want to do with the upgrades I recently did. I want to give them the proper time in write ups they and you guys deserve, but it's been slow going on hobby time. I look forward to the slow return to my previous point of sanity and eventual return from lurking. Until then, happy printing!

I for one, missed you.

A lot of us missed you and your great sense of humor. Get back to posting as soon as you can. You are not glowing in the dark I hope!

I worked at PNNL for a couple years which is at Hanford in WA... i still glow in the dark

Forget about it Ice King! You'll never marry a princess!!

I used to do a lot of government nuclear work. A burp like that is really not that significant, but it always gets blown out of proportion. You will get way more uptake with all sorts of radionuclides at a coal fired plant. You have to take it seriously, but it really makes everyone run around like chickens for a while.

I miss you guys too I hope to get a few good posts in this weekend.

More for the curious since some of you guys have industry experience. It's an entertaining puzzle right now. The container burped, which is vented (with filters) to prevent pressure build-up, was strong enough to pick up on air monitors to look like a concussive force (high movement one moment and an inrush back the next) which some think a chunk of the mine's back (ceiling) had fallen. Now that they're in there looking, they found some of the containers of magnesium oxide (to absorb moisture and help with the eventual encapsulation) on top gone with only the powder remaining. Something ate/destroyed polypropelene bags and cardboard containers without leaving an obvious visual trace. What the hell does that? My favorite rumor atm is when Los Alamos national lab packed a container, they used the wrong kind of kitty litter (organic based instead of mineral) was used to prevent some nitrate compounds from getting their exothermic dance on.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-My ... 05144.html

McSlappy wrote:Forget about it Ice King! You'll never marry a princess!!

I'll always have gunter.

I vote some weird fungus or single celled amoeba that eats cardboard and then blows up leaving no residue while spreading is spores. Either that or an alien escaped its packing and is eating any biologics or biologically based material (poly). In either case: it is ancient, scary, and you need The Doctor to help.