The Department of Energy expects several dozen drums of transuranic waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will be found not to pose any ignition risk and eventually cleared for transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a spokesperson said this week.
The 60 drums now isolated within storage domes at Area G, the radioactive waste area within Technical Area 54 at Los Alamos, were identified earlier this year as having potential for an exothermic reaction, a DOE spokesperson said in email response to Weapons Complex Monitor Wednesday.
Such a reaction might cause a drum to overheat and rupture because of incompatible materials inside, as happened in a February 2014 accident that resulted in an underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) or an April 2018 explosion of four drums inside a room in a building at the Idaho National Laboratory.
“After evaluation, subject matter expert analysis concluded that the containers within Dome 375 do not pose a threat to human health or the environment,” a DOE spokesperson said.
Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B), the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) legacy cleanup contractor, recently submitted a detailed evaluation and plan to the agency for shipping the containers “and is continuing to evaluate whether an actual chemical incompatibility exists,” the spokesperson said.
The ultimate plan for these containers is to clear them for transport, the spokesperson said. “It is DOE EM’s and our contractor’s responsibility to ensure the drums meet the WIPP waste-acceptance criteria, treat them as needed, and ensure they can be transported and disposed of safely,” the DOE spokesperson said.
Staff at Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board have alluded to the drums in sections of certain weekly updates on Los Alamos since late January. The latest such staff report on the situation was July 9. “The current restrictions are that the containers shall not be moved, there is a marked buffer zone established around each container of potential concern,” according to that document.
The situation recently drew attention in an Aug. 3 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper that questioned if the drums could be moved.
The containers hold primarily homogeneous solids or debris waste generated as part of long ago operations at Los Alamos, the spokesperson said.
