Nine containers of transuranic waste stored at Area G of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico did not, as of late July, meet the acceptance criteria for disposal further south at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The situation was cited in a nonconformance report from the U.S. Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, and then noted in a July 26 activity report from Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff as Los Alamos.
The containers failed to meet “basis of knowledge” requirements for oxidizing chemicals that the Energy Department implemented to prevent a radioactive material release similar to the February 2014 incident in which a drum from Los Alamos burst open in the WIPP underground. That radiation release forced the underground disposal facility offline for about three years.
“These energetic reactions can result in greater airborne respirable releases of radioactive material than is typically analyzed,” according to the DNFSB.
The July 26 DNFSB document offered no further specifics on the waste inside the containers and how it was generated.
A “routine evaluation” that includes radiography identified “what appears to be vermiculite or other granular material in the containers that historically could have been was used to absorb liquids, including potentially oxidizing chemicals,” according to a Thursday email from Todd Nelson, a spokesman for Los Alamos legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B). “This is a prohibited combination for WIPP certification.”
The cleanup contractor N3B owns seven of the nine drums. The vendor evaluates all containers prior to shipment and, if necessary, remediates them to meet the WIPP waste acceptance criteria, Nelson said.
The containers “remain safely and compliantly stored” in Technical Area 54 Area G at LANL pending their routine remediation and eventual WIPP certification prior to shipment, Nelson said.
Los Alamos operations manager Triad National Security, which owns two of the nine containers, issued a “potential inadequacies of safety analysis” due to the possible interaction of polyols, such as cheesecloth, and nitric acid in the containers. Cheesecloth, used over the years at Los Alamos for cleaning up glove boxes and mopping up spills, can evidently pose an ignition risk, according to some research.
The latest publicly available figures from the Energy Department show 213 shipments arrived at WIPP from Jan. 1 through Aug. 14 of this year, with 18 of those coming from Los Alamos.
