Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has acknowledged it will not meet upcoming contractual milestones for treatment of nitrate salts, according to a recently released site report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The news comes just days ahead of the scheduled period for the Department of Energy to award the contract for legacy cleanup operations at the nuclear-weapon site.
The DOE laboratory’s Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility (WCRRF) is treating 60 containers of remediated nitrate salts (RNS), similar to the LANL drum that blew open in 2014 and spread radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near the city of Carlsbad, N.M. Another 29 drums of unremediated nitrate salts (UNS) also await processing at the lab.
On June 30, the laboratory alerted DOE’s Environmental Management (EM) Field Office at Los Alamos that it “would not meet the current contractual milestones for processing of RNS and the UNS wastes of June 30 and September 30, 2017, respectively,” the DNFSB said in a report dated July 7 and released this month. “Their current working schedule, which was adjusted using efficiency data from the completed portion of the campaign, now projects respective completions of December 22, 2017, and April 10, 2018.”
The report did not provide direct explanation for the delay in completing treatment of remediated nitrate salts, and DOE EM spokespeople did not respond to requests for detail. The barrels are filled with a mixture of organic kitty litter and irradiated nitrate salts from Cold War nuclear weapons programs at Los Alamos.
The DNFSB report does note that personnel at the lab’s Area G waste management facility had during the prior week identified degradation in four drums of unremediated nitrate salts, indicating workers would have to remove poly drum liners and place them in other containers before transport to WCRRF.
As of July 28, the laboratory had processed 20 drums of remediated nitrate salts, according to the most recent update from the DNFSB. In each case, workers use a glove box to mix the waste with the inert substance zeolite to ensure the mixture is not combustible. The waste will eventually be sent south to WIPP, which reopened in December after a nearly three-year closure following the radiation incident.
An updated count of processed waste drums at LANL was not available this week.
The laboratory had hoped to process one drum per day, but was treating two-and-a-half to three per week at the end of last month, Scott Kovac, operations and research director for the nongovernmental Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said by email.
Nitrate-salt treatment is covered under the legacy nuclear cleanup bridge contract held by the laboratory’s management and operations prime, Los Alamos National Security. The bridge contract expires on Sept. 30, and DOE has not yet announced a new contract award.
LANL Cleanup Contract Award Due Within Days
However, the DOE Office of Environmental Management could be just days from awarding a new contract for the work.
A major procurements update from EM, dated Aug. 11, says the contract was due to be issued from June to August of this year. The Environmental Management office did not say last week whether it anticipated meeting that schedule.
One industry source said Fluor and CH2M are believed to have bid on the contract, but could not say whether the companies might be teaming with other firms. The source did not know what other companies might also be seeking the contract.
Fluor did not respond to a request for comment regarding a potential bid on cleanup at the nuclear-weapon lab, while CH2M declined to comment. Both companies sent representatives to a pre-solicitation conference on the contract in June 2016, along with an October 2016 site tour. Many of the major contractors in the DOE cleanup complex were also represented, including AREVA, CB&I, Atkins, Stoller Newport News Nuclear, and BWX Technologies.
It appears unlikely that Los Alamos National Security – a partnership of Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, AECOM, and the University of California – would secure the follow-on contract given the lab’s connection to the WIPP radiation release.
The new contract is expected to have a performance term of up to 10 years, covering management of waste produced at the lab from 1970 to 1998 – DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees LANL, is responsible for waste produced after 1998. Operations under the new EM contract include remediation of contaminated facilities at the laboratory; collection and preparation of legacy mixed-low level radioactive waste and transuranic waste for transport to permanent storage; and decontamination, decommissioning, and demolition of “facilities that impede the timely execution of environmental restoration activities.”
