Storing transuranic waste in certain containers near the border of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) campus may be riskier than site management believes, according to a report released late Friday by the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA).
EA personnel visited the Livermore, Calif., lab’s Building 332 Plutonium Facility and Waste Storage Facility from March 14-18, according to the report.
The Waste Storage Facility handles, stores, and treats transuranic and other waste. Some of the waste in the facility is packed in pipe overpack containers: specially sealed barrels designed for transuranic waste above a certain radioactivity threshold that is bound for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
LLNL assumed there would be little damage if pipe overpack containers at the Waste Storage Facility were engulfed in a pool of burning fuel. The assessment is based on accepted DOE guidelines, the report notes, which assume pipe overpack containers are extremely safe, vulnerable only to accidents such as puncture by forklift.
However, DOE is evaluating whether pipe overpack containers are as safe as previously thought. If the agency decides they are not, the official risk calculation at LLNL’s Waste Storage Facility might have to be changed, EA warned.
Pipe overpack containers are also piling up at the Building 332 Plutonium Facility because of an ongoing effort to reduce the amount of nuclear material stored there, the report says. DOE tests plutonium and highly enriched uranium at Building 332 to support the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal. This generates transuranic waste.
Meanwhile, if WIPP does not resume acceptance of transuranic waste across the DOE complex by 2018, LLNL could run out of space at its Waste Storage Facility. The lab “has looked at options for increasing TRU waste storage capacity but has not initiated specific planning,” according to the EA report.
WIPP is expected to start receiving new shipments of transuranic waste in February, a DOE official at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., said June 7.
