The Energy Department and its contractors are discussing amongst themselves different approaches to a series of safety procedures for treating the problematic stream of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that caused the 2014 radiation leak at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
According to a June 10 site weekly report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) — managed by the Los Alamos National Security conglomerate — along with DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Office of Environmental Management “continue to debate alternative approaches to the safety basis strategy formally submitted by LANL in April to support final treatment of the RNS wastes.”
This “prolonged debate,” as DNFSB called it, centers around revised safety basis documents for three activities related to transuranic waste processing at LANL: on-site transportation; the lab’s Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility; and the Area G transuranic waste processing and storage facility.
The revised safety documents for on-site transportation and the Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility were due the week of June 13 to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos field office, according to the June 10 DNFSB report.
According to a LANL spokesperson, they will arrive late.
“The planned date for the submission of both documents is August 15, 2016,” the LANL spokesperson wrote in a Monday email. “They will be submitted to the local field office of the National Nuclear Security Administration for approval.”
The spokesperson did not comment on the due date for the Area G revised safety basis document. DNFSB reports are usually made public no later than 35 days after they are submitted to the board’s headquarters in Washington.
“We are working hard to develop a thorough safety analysis and evaluation of the proposed activity, and plan on completing the analysis very soon,” the LANL spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, LANL workers are chipping away at safety improvements to barrels of transuranic waste at the lab that contain the problematic mixture of organic kitty litter and nitrate salts that reacted to cause an explosion that popped the top off a barrel, leaking radiation into WIPP in 2014.
On June 3, workers at LANL’s Area G transuranic waste processing facility fitted all the remaining drums of what the lab calls “improperly remediated nitrate salts” with high-capacity filter vents, according to a DNFSB report dated June 3.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is slated to reopen for waste emplacement on Dec. 12.
