Temporalities of Wildfire, Private-Equity, and Chemical Reaction in the 2014 WIPP-LANL Kitty Litter Accident

• In Event: Time-Scapes of Toxicity (2): Time of Knowing

Abstract

Underground at the WIPP defense waste repository in New Mexico on Valentines Day 2014, a transuranic waste drum originally from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) burst open—spitting out fire and radionuclides. There had been a chemical reaction in one of the 650+ LANL drums improperly packaged with organic Swheat Scoop kitty litter, rather than the recommended inorganic zeolite absorbent. This talk presents this error as symptomatic of the frenzied tempos of the 3706 campaign: an agreement between the U.S. DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department – spearheaded publically by NM Governor Martinez – to rapidly accelerate shipments, from LANL to WIPP, of nitrate salt waste drums perceived to be threatened by future wildfires. Hired to package the drums was EnergySolutions (ES): a private nuclear waste contractor expanding rapidly – through corporate buyouts backed financially by the private equity company Energy Capital Partners that owns it – across forty U.S. states, the UK, Canada, and Japan. Drawing on ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in Los Alamos and Carlsbad (2017-2018) – and inspired by STS and anthropological literatures on poly-temporality (e.g. Traweek 1992; Miyazaki 2003) – this talk explores how the tempos of a chemical reaction, of gubernatorial electoral politics, of wildfires, of DOE performance bonus schedules, and of private-equity financial pressures converged as triggers to the 2014 LANL drum breach. It then critiques the DOE’s 2015 Accident Investigation Board’s description of the event by emphasizing key political-temporal contexts sidelined in the DOE report.

Author

• Vincent Ialenti, George Washington University