Officials Focus on Reaction in Los Alamos Drums as Possible Cause of Release
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/9/2014
It could be two -to-three years before operations fully resume at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant following the Feb. 14 radiation release at the facility, the head of the recovery effort for contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership said this week. “We have decon operations that we know we are going to have to do in the underground. We have mine stability and mine safety operations that we need to resume in the mine. We have some ventilation changes we have to make. Then, as you heard from the Accident Investigation Board, there are a number of our programs that need to be shored up,” NWP Recovery Manager Jim Blankenhorn said at a town hall meeting held in Carlsbad, N.M. “So right now our schedule shows that it is on the order of no earlier than 18 months. It could be as long as 24 to 36 months to complete all of the activities and claim full resumption of operations.”
A shutdown of several years is set to impact transuranic waste programs across the Department of Energy complex. As the search continues for the cause of the radiation release that shut down WIPP, this week officials focused on the possibility that a reaction in a group of drums from Los Alamos National Laboratory led to the event. The release is believed to have originated in Panel 7 of the repository, which contains drums from LANL, Idaho and Savannah River. “We started with all the waste streams were potential candidates. As a result of our analytical analysis and our forensic analysis we’ve come down to three or four waste streams that we think could be the cause of the event,” Blankenhorn said. “But as we’ve looked at those to try and decide which one might have higher probability than the other, we ran across some inconsistencies in a LANL waste stream, had some nitrate salts that, if untreated and in the presence of an organic like plastic or paper, could result in a reactive chemical energetic event.”
Recent Change to Organic Absorbent May be Key
The release is expected to be the result of an explosion within one or more waste drums placed in the underground. Initial forays into Panel 7 showed that magnesium oxide bags weighing thousands of pounds had been knocked off the waste drums they were covering. While many Los Alamos drums already emplaced in WIPP had nitrate salts, there was a recent change in packaging the drums from an inorganic absorbent to an organic wheat-based absorbent. “That’s one of the other reasons why we’ve started to look more at this waste stream, it’s because of that addition of the organic material,” Blankenhorn said. In all, 55 drums in Panel 7 contain the combination of nitrates and organic absorbent. Blankenhorn added: “That’s not to say that we’ve concluded that’s what happened. It’s just that as we look at those different waste streams, that one has risen to the top as a potential possibility. So we are looking at that one very aggressively, but we are continuing to evaluate the other waste streams.” He said that one other similar waste stream was also from Los Alamos, but when asked declined to name the origin of the other similar waste stream.
Samples collected during entries into WIPP have been sent for analysis to laboratories at the site, as well as LANL and Savannah River National Laboratory, for “insight into what may have caused the February 14 radiological event,” according to a DOE release. “Re-entry teams collected swipe samples in Room 7 of Panel 7. Workers also collected a filter from a fixed air sampler at the entrance of Room 1 in Panel 7 and the filter cartridge from a continuous air monitor in the exhaust drift of Panel 7. The samples will undergo a thorough radiological and chemical analysis at the three laboratories.”
At the time of the release, Los Alamos was in the midst of a high-profile campaign to accelerate removal of 3,706 cubic meters of aboveground transuranic waste by a June 30 commitment to the state of New Mexico. Waste was processed and packaged in a drum line operated by contractor EnergySolutions, and then characterized and approved for shipment by NWP’s Central Characterization Project. In order to meet the milestone, after WIPP shut down Los Alamos began shipping waste last month for temporary storage aboveground at the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews, Texas. Currently 459 containers are stored at WCS, though shipments were stopped last week after the LANL waste started to be examined as a potential cause of the radiation release.
WCS Taking ‘Extra Precautions’
It is unclear how much of the Los Alamos waste with nitrate salts is now being stored at WCS. The facility is taking “extra precautions” with LANL drums that have been shipped there for temporary storage during the WIPP shutdown, spokesman Chuck McDonald said this week. “All the response mechanisms are in place. Obviously, we take the situation with the utmost seriousness, and so we are proceeding as you would expect. … It’s something we are aware of and taking every precaution possible,” he said. “Remember, everything that comes to WCS is over-packed. You have a container inside a container, so if there were a rupture, it would be contained in the secondary container.”
WCS has been in “constant communication” with DOE, LANL, WIPP and Texas regulators about the current theory and workers at the site are prepared to take any emergency response needed, McDonald said. “WCS has increased video monitoring and inspections of the TRU inventory in storage to identify anything that appears unusual. Any off-normal drum can be remediated onsite with our existing treatment facilities and licenses,” he said. “All parties are acting as if the pressurization of drums is plausible, but no immediate concern has been specifically and unequivocally identified. WCS and Texas regulators are using an abundance of caution concerning this matter, as are the federal oversight agencies.”
Will Panel 7 Be Sealed Off?
With a number of suspect drums remaining, NWP may seal off the section where the waste is emplaced. “Is there really a safety hazard that would require us to do anything other than just leave them where they are at? In Panel 7, we’d have again to look at if it involves the entire waste stream or was it just a single container that had a prohibited item in it. If it’s the entire waste stream, we’d have a decision to make,” Blankenhorn said. “Do we just seal that portion of Panel 7, and continue to use the rest of that panel? Or is there a cost-benefit analysis or a safety reason to go in and retrieve all 55 containers if it is this waste stream.”
Other panels in the WIPP underground containing waste that remain open should be closed, New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn said at the town hall. “These panels need to be closed,” Flynn said. “There is a mechanism in the permit, right now to close those panels. So you have the ability right now to close those panels. I’m not sure why that wasn’t done before I became the cabinet secretary.”
No Responses: Communication Remains Issue
The Department of Energy came under fire in the weeks following the release for poor communications with the public and the state. While DOE has since started weekly town hall meetings and provided regular updates, it did not respond to several requests for comment this week from WC Monitor. DOE has also declined numerous interview requests from WC Monitor over the past two months with Carlsbad Field Office Manager Joe Franco, and newly posted WIPP Federal Recovery Team leads Mark Senderling and Tom Teynor. NWP also did not respond to request for comment this week and has declined repeated interview requests in recent weeks with Blankenhorn and new President and Project Manager Bob McQuinn. EnergySolutions referred request for comment to LANL, which did not respond to comment.
NMED ‘Frustrated’ No Definitive Cause
The New Mexico Environment Department is “frustrated that we have yet to identify a definitive cause for this event and we are almost three months now after the incident,” Flynn said at the town hall meeting. “We continue to push the Department of Energy to make information available to the public.” He noted that “theory after theory” has been put forward from out of WIPP. That includes a release triggered by naturally occurring radon, or a mine collapse or falling roof bolt, both of which have largely been ruled out. But the state has not ruled out “some type of domestic terrorism event,” Flynn said. “The public is going to lose faith in us, the state entities, the federal government and the contractor working with the federal government when you put information out and your story changes every other week,” Flynn said. “We absolutely need to know what happened, but we need to make decisions based on fact. So the evolving theories undermines confidence in the Department and NWP’s ability to get to the bottom of this.”
