The National Nuclear Security Administration said Thursday it is is pleased with the outcome of a federal operational readiness review (FORR) for the Transuranic Waste Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, in which 12 of the 13 functional areas passed muster.
“This was a successful review in the eyes of NNSA,” an agency spokesperson said in a Thursday email to Weapons Complex Monitor. The FORR, which was completed earlier in August, was reported recently by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The Energy Department typically requires operational readiness reviews or prior to startup or restart of nuclear facilities.
The Transuranic Waste Facility passed review in areas such as quality assurance and maintenance. The lone functional area found lacking was the startup plan, which is not expected to be particularly difficult to resolve, the NNSA spokesperson indicated. Facility management expects to complete the corrective actions and receive agency approval to start operations by the end of September.
“The amount of prestart and post-start findings was unremarkable for an FORR of a new nuclear facility,” the spokesperson said, adding that the FORR team was impressed with the TWF operators.
Los Alamos reported in January that construction was complete at the Transuranic Waste Facility, which will be used for storage of newly generated transuranic waste – waste generated since 1999 – and certification for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, capabilities currently housed at the lab’s Area G. The NNSA has estimated the facility will have a service life of 50 years.
Once the TWF is operational, it should provide a significant improvement over the handling and storage of transuranic waste at Area G and the outdoor pads at the facility, according to the Aug. 4 DNFSB report (posted this week) on the readiness review.
But since its inception in 2006, the project “has a long history of deviations from DOE requirements,” the DNFSB had said in an early August site report from Los Alamos, made public earlier this week. Delays in certification issues could temporarily delay shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the DNFSB said. Also, new safety class seismic switches did not work as intended, the board said.
There are a number of “open issues” still to be addressed for the fire suppression system as well, the DNFSB site report said.
