[5] The 2014 incidents involved a waste explosion and airborne release of radiological material that exposed 21 plant workers to small doses of radiation that were within safety limits.

Ultimately the Lyons site was deemed unusable due to local and regional opposition, and in particular the discovery of unmapped oil and gas wells located in the area.

[7] As drilling in the Salado Formation salt beds began in 1975, scientists discovered that at the edge of the basin there had been geological disturbances that had moved interbed layers into a nearly vertical position.

[7] In response, the site was moved toward the more stable center of the basin where the Salado Formation salt beds are the thickest and are perfectly horizontal.

[citation needed] Because of plasticity effects, salt will flow to any cracks that develop, a major reason why the area was chosen as a host medium for the WIPP project.

[14] In order to address growing public unrest concerning construction of the WIPP, the New Mexico Environmental Evaluation Group (EEG) was created in 1978.

[7] This group, charged with overseeing the WIPP, verified statements, facts, and studies conducted and released by the DOE regarding the facility.

[9] This change in classification led to a decrease in safety parameters for the proposed facility, allowing construction to continue at a faster pace.

Various structural and environmental tests would then be performed on the facility to verify its integrity and to prove its ability to safely contain nuclear waste.

Attempts at testing were resumed in October 1991 with US Secretary of Energy James Watkins announcing that he would begin transportation of waste to the WIPP.

This waste shipment was from Los Alamos National Laboratory, a major nuclear weapons research and development facility located north of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

[21] In 2020, a subcontractor at the WIPP opened a $32 million lawsuit claiming that "the company that runs the facility breached its contract to rebuild the nuclear waste repository's air system."

Due to the 2014 incident, a Texas-based company named Critical Application Alliance LLC was hired to build a new ventilation system.

[22] On February 15, 2014, authorities ordered workers to shelter in place at the facility after air monitors had detected unusually high radiation levels at 11:30 p.m. the previous day.

[24][25] Later, trace amounts of airborne radiation consisting of americium and plutonium particles were discovered above ground, 0.5 mi (0.80 km) from the facility.

Joe Franco, manager of the DOE Carlsbad Field Office, said an underground air monitor detected high levels of alpha and beta radiation activity consistent [with] the waste buried at WIPP.

"[27] Regarding the elevated levels of plutonium and americium detected outside the nuclear waste repository, Ryan Flynn, New Mexico Environment Secretary stated during a news conference: "Events like this simply should never occur.

[39] Bob Alvarez, former DOE official, stated that the long-term ramifications of the WIPP issue are grounded in the fact that the DOE has 66,000 m3 (2,300,000 cu ft) of transuranic waste that has not been disposed of due to the fact that there are no long-term disposition plans for transuranic waste, including 5 tons of plutonium that are in-situ at the Savannah River Site, as well as water from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.

[40] In an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Alvarez wrote that "Wastes containing plutonium blew through the WIPP ventilation system, traveling 2,150 feet to the surface, contaminating at least 17 workers, and spreading small amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

Alvarez ponders the notion of "contract handling" of radioactive waste because it deploys conventional processing practices that do not take into consideration the tens of thousands of containers buried before 1970 at several DOE sites.

[43] Anthropologist Vincent Ialenti has examined the political, social, and financial triggers to this organic cat litter error in detail, linking it to the accelerated pace of the Department of Energy's and State of New Mexico's 3706 nuclear waste cleanup campaign, which ran from 2011 to 2014.

Following the interment of waste in the facility, estimated to be sometime between 2025 and 2035[citation needed] the storage caverns will be collapsed and sealed with 13 layers of concrete and soil.

However, federal funding for the site was terminated in 2011 by amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011.

The waste must have radioactivity exceeding 100 nanocuries (3.7 kBq) per gram from TRUs that produce alpha radiation with a half life greater than 20 years.

[53] Because of plasticity effects, salt and water will flow to any cracks that develop, a major reason why the area was chosen as a host medium for the WIPP project.

[54][55] Since 1983, the DOE has been working with linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, materials scientists, science fiction writers, and futurists to come up with a warning system.

[56] For the case of the WIPP, the markers, called "passive institutional controls", will include an outer perimeter of thirty-two 25-foot-tall (7.6 m) granite pillars built in a four-mile (6 km) square.

After the 2014 events at the WIPP, the DMTPC experiments were put on hold, but are expected to resume after the building is finished and waste is done being placed in the facility.

Previous experiments at WIPP include the neutrinoless double beta decay searching MAJORANA Project detectors called Segmented Enriched Germanium Assembly (SEGA) and Multiple Element Germanium Array (MEGA); these were prototype detectors used to develop the measurement apparatus of the collaboration that was deployed in 2004 in WIPP.

The 2000 testing of actinide transport within the Culebra Dolomite from the surrounding area of Carlsbad, New Mexico, was one of many experiments at this location to address concerns for lab safety.