Following up on remaining safety issues related to the hazardous waste repository at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Area G, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has announced plans to hold a public hearing in Santa Fe on March 22.
In a prepared statement DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery said, “With the upcoming wildfire season, the Board is interested in understanding potential hazards to the workforce and public posed by management of transuranic waste at Area G. The Board is looking forward to hearing from DOE, NNSA and the laboratory leadership about steps taken and planned to ensure safe management of transuranic waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”
The Board’s purpose at the hearing is to hear from subject matter experts and officials responsible for safety and health issues related to the processing, handling, and storage of transuranic (TRU) waste at LANL. TRU waste is material contaminated by radioactive elements such as plutonium and americium.
Two years ago, LANL was about to complete an expedited program to remove the remaining TRU waste at Area G from the risk of another spring wildfire, when one of the dispatched canisters erupted in the underground depository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad in Southern New Mexico.
Canisters containing similarly inappropriately remediated nitrate-salt bearing waste remain in storage at Area G under close surveillance. These materials have raised additional safety issues that the board would like to examine.
The meeting is scheduled for 5 to 9 p.m. at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy St. from 5-9 p.m. There will be an opportunity for public comment. The meeting will be streamed live through a link on the Board’s web site at www.dnfsb.gov.
Full details of the hearing were published Friday in the Federal Register.
DOE IG; LANL’s Corrective Action Process Falling Short
The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) corrective action program does not properly address the root causes of problems at the facility to prevent recurrence and fails to close corrective action records at the appropriate time, resolving some before completion and leaving others open long after, according to a Feb. 25 Department of Energy Inspector General (IG) audit report.
Of the 460 items recorded in the lab’s issues management tracking system between 2009 and 2014, 196 were identified as high significance and featured “significant weaknesses in areas such as analysis and documentation of root causes for issues,” the IG said. Seventy-three percent of those high-significance issues were “unsatisfactorily addressed” and not effectively closed, the audit found, while 36 percent were closed before the completion of corrective actions and 35 percent did not include causal information regarding the incident in question, the audit noted.
Roughly 46 percent of the high-significance issues were closed before the lab could address the root cause of the event, the IG found. It noted an incident in which corrective actions following an August 2010 chemical spill and hazardous material cleanup at a lab waste management site did not include the procedure changes necessary to prevent recurrence. “While the procedure was revised, the revisions did not address the specific handling and packaging issues that LANL determined contributed to the spill,” the IG said.
The IG said deficiencies in LANL’s corrective action management program create an inefficient system in which certain problems – rather than the underlying issue – are repeatedly corrected. LANL began tried to improve its corrective action process in 2014, the IG said, but staffing reductions delayed those efforts. The IG recommended that LANL meet the requirements to properly process high-significance deficiencies “by identifying root cause, determining extent of problem, and ensuring effectiveness of corrective actions,” and develop procedures to address timely issue closure. The National Nuclear Security Administration agreed to address the recommendations by Sept. 30.
