The Los Angeles Times reports that the estimated cost of cleaning up a 2014 underground containment failure at a nuclear waste storage site in New Mexico is climbing past the two billion United States dollar mark (archived). The failure occurred at a facility located within an underground salt dome. A container holding Plutonium and Americium waste failed because organic kitty litter used as a binding agent reacted with the waste creating gas that lead to an explosion reportedly contaminating 35% of the space in the underground facility. Using inert mineral kitty litter would have prevented this accident.

The accident has lead to a cavalcade of fail¹ as the facility's unsafety has lead to delays in sequestering waste from "temporary" storage at former nuclear weapons facilities including the notorious Hanford Site there. This means that in addition to the costs imposed by attempts to restore this salt dome to safety the accident has forced the United States Government to breach agreements with a number of state and local governments for failure to dispose of their nuclear trash according to agreed upon schedules. It has also threatened to bring the United States into violation of International Treaties with Russian and other nuclear powers on the reduction of weapons grade material.

The immediate cost of cleaning up after this breach is set to eclipse the Three Mile Island incident in absolute dollars, and the total cost imposed by the fallout is likely to eclipse Three Mile Island in inflation adjusted dollars. The latest alleged USMS auction of Silk Road-ish Bitcoins at 1.6 million United States dollars for 2700 Bitcoins can do nothing for the fiat order when it has debts like this. Sorry for your loss, but you should have read the label on that kitty litter.

1. This is not unlike the situation US farmers chose trading their windbreaks and their neighbor's orchards for a season's soybean harvest.  ↩