The Energy Department could develop a new mobile waste-treatment unit to decontaminate more than 70 barrels of potentially explosive nuclear waste stored at a private contractor in Texas, a source in New Mexico said Tuesday.
The 70 barrels, which contain a potentially explosive combination of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts and organic kitty litter, represent the greater part of the 100-plus barrels from the Los Alamos National Laboratory that privately owned Waste Control Specialists has stored under contract since 2014 at its waste complex near Andrews, Texas.
DOE calls this type of transuranic waste, produced during Cold War weapons programs, “inappropriately remediated nitrate salts;” it is the same kind of material that, three years ago Tuesday, caused an explosion and underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. In its current form, the waste cannot be moved out of Texas because it meets neither the U.S. Transportation Department’s shipping requirements, nor WIPP’s waste acceptance criteria.
That means the Department of Energy is “going to have to bring in some mobile treatment capability to treat those containers,” the source said, citing meetings with DOE officials.
It was not clear when DOE might develop the mobile treatment system, or when the technology could be deployed to Waste Control Specialists.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Environmental Management Field Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the mobile waste treatment system, or about the system’s possible costs. Some 60 barrels of inappropriately remediated nitrate salts remain at the lab, where DOE is zeroing in on a cleanup method. The agency thinks it will finalize a fix this summer for the potentially explosive barrels still in its custody.
