Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/6/2014
The Department of Energy officially announced late last week that it will not meet the high profile June 30 deadline for removing 3,706 cubic meters of aboveground transuranic waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The move was expected, after a radiological release shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February and the recent discovery of a breached waste drum from Los Alamos suspended the LANL campaign.“Working together with the State of New Mexico, we have made great strides in cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory,” David Klaus, DOE Deputy Under Secretary for Management and Performance, said in a May 30 statement. “As we work to assess the conditions of the transuranic waste program at the lab, we have decided to halt further shipments until we can reassure the public that it is safe to do so. This was a tough decision to make and the Department remains committed to solving this issue and resuming shipments.”
The effort was proceeding largely ahead of schedule until it hit major roadblocks this year when shipments to WIPP were halted following the underground fire and radiation release in February. After the WIPP shutdown, state officials and DOE remained adamant that they would do everything possible to remove the waste from Los Alamos by the end of June. As a result, shipments started in April for temporary storage of the LANL waste at Waste Control Specialists’ disposal site in Texas. But those were halted in early May after a Los Alamos drum was suspected of being the source of the WIPP release. In all, about 57 drums at LANL were found to be similar to the nitrate salt bearing container believed to have contributed to the WIPP release
NMED: Consequences Not Decided Yet
The campaign was launched as part of a framework agreement with New Mexico developed in the wake of the 2011 Las Conchas wildfire that threatened transuranic waste stored at Los Alamos. In early 2012, the Department and New Mexico announced a new agreement setting up the 3,706 campaign, which came as the DOE also officially acknowledged that it would be unable to complete the overall cleanup of Los Alamos by 2015 as required in a consent order with the state.
The New Mexico Environment Department has not yet determined what consequences will be for DOE for missing the deadline, NMED spokesman Jim Winchester said this week. NMED is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the announcement Winchester said in a statement. Meeting the deadline was linked to renegotiating a Consent Order between DOE and the state. “The state will review potential options in regards to the larger Consent Order for all legacy waste clean-up at LANL, including DOE’s track record at LANL,” Winchester said. “While the situation at WIPP has temporarily halted the 3706 Campaign, DOE has removed over 4,000 above-ground TRU waste containers over the past two years as a result of the Campaign (93% of the 3706 Campaign TRU Waste has been removed).” Before N.M. Gov. Susana Martinez (R) took office, “that waste had sat untouched for over a decade on the LANL site,” he said. “As soon as the WIPP is able to safely resume operations, NMED will aggressively push DOE to complete the 3706 Campaign.”
Meeting the goal for the end of June was already seen as highly unlikely given the tight schedule and the stalled shipments. DOE said at the end of April just before the suspension that about 70 shipments remained in the LANL campaign, which was sending a maximum of 10 shipments per week to WCS—leaving about seven weeks of shipments at those rates. There’s no indication on how long it will take for shipments to restart, and tests on the LANL waste continue.
‘There Will Be Consequences’
NMED Secretary Ryan Flynn emphasized last month that “there will be consequences” for not meeting the 2015 deadline for LANL cleanup. “I’m not prepared to say what the consequences will be at the moment, but I will say very clearly that when the Department of Energy agrees to clean up an area in our state by a certain date and they fail and create expectations in the citizens of our state who believed that they were going to successfully remediate the site in 10 years and they fail to achieve that goal I think there must consequences for failing,” he told WC Monitor in late May.
He added: “The consent decree has not been changed and the concept was we wanted the Department of Energy to demonstrate that they could successfully complete a project. And so their track record, for better or for worse, will be taken into account when we determine how to move forward.”
