The New Mexico Environment Department recently gave its blessing to a Department of Energy’s plan to commence remediation of radioactive contamination along a public road just outside Los Alamos National Laboratory property.
The work plan stipulates that DOE will start its field work on Middle DP Road in April and it should last six months, according to an April 5 letter from Kevin Pierard, the chief of the hazardous waste bureau at the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to Arturo Duran, the designated agency manager for the DOE Office of Environmental Management at Los Alamos.
The field work was to start this week, Mike Erickson, the director of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act remediation program for cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) said Wednesday.
In a presentation to the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board, Erickson called the work high priority in part because the contamination was discovered on former DOE land that was supposed to be fully remediated before it was turned over to the county a few years ago.
The DOE will provide NMED with a solid waste management unit assessment report by April 30, 2022. The DOE submitted its now-approved work plan to the state agency on March 25, a state agency spokeswoman said by email last week. .
Contaminated wood and other material were discovered in February 2020 on a 28-acre tract of property the Los Alamos National Laboratory transferred to Los Alamos county in 2018. The debris was turned up by a subcontractor for Los Alamos County that was digging up an old sewer line in preparation for a new housing complex in the area. The DOE soon removed some material from the site for analysis and fenced off the disturbed area. Tests at Waste Control Specialists in Texas showed there were traces of plutonium in the debris.
A preliminary screening plan was filed with the state in late December by DOE and legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos. No radiological contamination has been found in an area being developed for senior citizen housing, Erickson told the advisory panel.
While NMED has criticized the pace of the federal reaction to the contamination, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration said actions said the response was moving promptly given constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic.
