The Department of Energy’s legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suspended some work for more than a week in January to address safety issues, according to a recent staff report to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
According to a board report dated Jan. 29 and posted online this week, the idling was the result of Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) declaring two temporary stop works at Area G: a 63-acre site opened in the 1950s inside the lab’s Technical Area-54, and which contains old radioactive waste disposal areas. Area G is also where workers store, characterize and remediate transuranic waste at Los Alamos before it is shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., according to a DOE document.
“One [work stoppage] was taken in response to questions raised by safety basis personnel during the review of documents and the other was taken in response to a number of vehicle-related incidents,” according to the report.
An N3B spokesman confirmed in an email late Tuesday that work resumed at Area G Jan. 29. The contractor first stopped work at Area G Jan. 19 “to ensure proper approval authorities were maintained and that work continued within the DOE-approved safety basis.” Work resumed Jan. 25 but stopped again Jan. 26 in response to the vehicle accidents.
“N3B continues to encourage employees to use stop work authorities when issues arise and to ensure concerns are adequately addressed before work restarts,” the company spokesman said.
N3B started work on a potential 10-year $1.4-billion remediation contract in April 2018, although some sources said recently DOE might replace the Huntington Ingalls Industries-led contractor once the five-year base period ends In April 2023.
