Report: Mix of cat litter, salts caused nuclear-dump mishap that led to closure of US facility

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An incompatible combination of nitrate salts and organic cat litter is to blame for a mishap that forced the closure of the nation's only underground nuclear waste repository, according to findings released Thursday by an independent team of experts from national laboratories around the country.

The technical team was charged by the U.S. Energy Department to investigate all the possible scenarios that could have led to the release of radioactive material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February 2014.

The report comes more than a year after a single container of waste stored at the repository breached and contaminated 21 workers with low-level radioactivity. That container had been packed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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