The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Plutonium Facility (PF-4) has returned to full operations following a years-long pause in the facility’s fissile material operations, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week.
Fissile material operations at the nation’s only fully capable plutonium research and processing facility were suspended in June 2013 because of criticality safety weaknesses stemming in part from lack of management commitment to criticality safety and attrition in key safety personnel.
A Department of Energy review released in January said LANL had made significant improvements toward fully resuming operations, including in its execution of procedures, criticality safety postings, fissile material labeling, and worker training and qualification.
In August, LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said the lab had implemented new criticality safety controls at the facility as part of the site’s nuclear criticality safety program, which intends to prevent inadvertent nuclear criticalities, or self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reactions.
Recently, a federal readiness assessment team out-briefed the results of its review of plutonium pyrochemistry operations at the facility, at which time a team leader said LANL and NNSA Field Office readiness practices “were best in the complex,” according to a Sept. 9 site representative report, released last week, from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The report said 18 more readiness activities will take place over the next two years, including those related to aqueous chloride and nitrate operations, and that once all remaining corrective actions are closed, “LANL will have completed the revised scope of the formal restart project, restoring basic functionality to the facility’s manufacturing and surveillance missions.”
