The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on Tuesday called on major Energy Department officials and local managers at a formal meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., to answer detailed questions about what they were doing to address a combination of radiological waste and safety problems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The witnesses, who have not always been on the same page, were notably upbeat and synchronized.
Of greatest concern were management of nuclear waste at the DOE laboratory and the threat that seasonal wildfires could pose to that material while it awaits final disposal.
There seemed to be much agreement among the meeting’s participants that the highest and most critical priority was the batch of improperly remediated cans of nitrate salts that contain ignitable “kitty-litter” in a volatile mixture. A container that originated at LANL caused the underground radiological event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project two years ago. The lab’s waste treatment facility and characterization and packaging depot are both in cold shutdown at the moment, which will complicate the process of developing changes in the safety basis, the fundamental safety documents for the facility.
While safety board members saw loose strings in corrective action plans and soft spots in lab’s the emergency management, field office managers had good reasons to explain why the current situation was not more advanced, usually from a resource shortage.
A glossy hand-out prepared for the occasion by the lab and DOE depicted an optimistically sharp improvement in drought conditions across the state, with Northern New Mexico in particular enjoying a wetter than usual pattern, which is accurate for the moment, though other projections point to lower precipitation and higher temperatures.
During the public comment period, one of the most experienced critics of the laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, made a strong connection between haste and waste. Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center said the rush to remove all the plutonium-contaminated waste from LANL contributed to the ultimate delay of the whole waste disposal project. Now, he said, “WIPP is rushing to get open before (DOE Secretary) Moniz leaves office” at the end of this year, “but the ventilation system can’t get back into [full] operation until 2021.” Also, he noted, “Idaho has 600 shipments ready to go, and a legal order to get it out by 2018,” which would probably mean precedence over LANL plans for shipping waste to WIPP.
