13 Workers Contaminated Following Leak
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
2/28/2014
With news getting worse at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant amidst test results this week that showed 13 workers experienced internal contamination following a radiation leak at the plant, several options have emerged for progressing with the Department of Energy’s transuranic waste campaign at Los Alamos. WIPP is shut down indefinitely as the radiation leak is addressed, but the state of New Mexico so far has taken a hard stance on enforcing DOE’s milestone to remove by June 2014 all aboveground legacy transuranic waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Offering a possible solution, Waste Control Specialists said this week it is interested in offering its facility in Texas to temporarily store the LANL waste. But a second option being promoted by WIPP-area officials would see the construction of a concrete pad at the WIPP site to temporarily store the LANL transuranic waste until the underground repository reopens.
On the night of Feb. 14 an underground monitor at WIPP detected what is likely a radiation leak from a waste drum. While ventilation was subsequently filtered, air sampling stations at numerous locations in the vicinity of the site have since picked up trace amounts of plutonium and americium. And this week this week officials announced that 13 WIPP workers who were above ground the evening of Feb. 14 have been notified that they tested positive for internal radiological contamination, while tests are being conducted on additional WIPP workers who were at the site the following morning. “It is premature to speculate on the health effects of these preliminary results, or any treatment that may be needed. However, on-site sampling and surveys and environmental monitoring, to date, continue to support National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) modeling, which indicates that airborne contamination was likely at very low levels,” DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Joe Franco said in a Feb. 26 letter to area residents.
The process for reentering the mine is still expected to take several weeks, while resumption of operations could be several months or even longer, pushing out of reach the much-touted June 2014 commitment to New Mexico for the LANL waste. State officials said that despite the events at WIPP, they still expect DOE to meet the commitment.”I have made it very clear that we wanted to that removed from Los Alamos by the end of June. My words were, come hell or high water I want that waste off the hill,” New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn said in a press conference last week.”I do not intend to renegotiate that deadline at this time. Until federal officials have investigated every possible contingency and exhausted every other available option for removing that waste I will not back off that deadline.” At Los Alamos the campaign is continuing despite the WIPP closure. “We are committed to meeting our 3706 campaign obligations and, in an effort to be ready to resume shipping, are continuing to process the waste,” a DOE spokesperson said this week.
Should LANL Waste Go to WCS?
In the absence of WIPP, WCS has emerged as one option for DOE to store the LANL waste until WIPP reopens and still meet its milestone. “WCS could handle the transuranic waste from Los Alamos under its current license. It is within the license parameters,” WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald told WC Monitor. “There hasn’t been, as I am aware of, any discussions with DOE. We want to be a resource to DOE, and if they are interested in doing something, we certainly want to talk to them about it.” However, the cost of sending the waste first to Texas, paying for storage and then packaging and shipping it again for ultimate disposal at WIPP may be difficult given tight budgets.
Some local officials in the WIPP region are opposing storage of the LANL material at WCS, and plan to meet with New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez (R) and other state officials soon on the matter. They plan to propose the construction of an aboveground storage pad at WIPP, potentially covered by a roof, for the LANL waste, which they believe could be constructed within a matter of weeks. The WIPP site has equipment in place and trained employees who would be able to unload the transuranic waste shipping containers, noted Eddy County, N.M. Commissioner Jack Volpato. And an important issue for the region will be keeping WIPP workers employed and at the site while decontamination of the underground takes place, Volpato told WC Monitor, stating that during that time there would be lots of work available to receive the LANL shipments.
DOE, Contractor Work on Recovery Plan
At WIPP, testing of the air and workers continues as DOE and site contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership work on a recovery plan for eventually restarting operations. “Nuclear Waste Partnership provided DOE with an integrated recovery plan that currently my team is reviewing,” Franco said at a Feb. 27 press conference. “Some of the elements the plan include the following: There’s a re-entry phase to get back into the underground, a recovery once the re-entry is complete and it also includes communication and outreach and resumption of operations. I expect our review to be completed in a timely manner and we will provide comments to Nuclear Waste Partnership, which will then execute the plan.”
‘We Will Not Rush This Process’
NWP’s plan includes multiple steps for identifying and addressing the cause of the radiation leak, Nuclear Waste Partnership President Farok Sharif said at the press conference. “The first step that we want to do is to make sure that we stabilize our mine ventilation system. We have the experts already onsite as we are working on this,” he said, adding that should be complete “within the next few days.” The contractor subsequently will send two probes down the salt handling shaft to obtain airborne radiation and air quality readings. “Based on the readings that we find using our probes, we will then send our personnel with the appropriate personal protection equipment that they will wear,” he said.
Underground, the team will check for contamination from the salt shaft to the air intake shaft. “A plan will then be formulated to move toward the waste panel, taking air readings every step of the way and also making sure that there is no radiological contamination along the way. The next step will also be to identify the source of the contamination and develop a plan to mitigate it. We will go out there and take pictures if it something that is very obvious and we will lay out a plan on how to mitigate that problem,” Sharif said. “We have a lot to get done, and let me emphasize again, we will not rush this process. We have a plan to ensure that our employees are safe and we will not deviate from this plan.”
And before restarting operations, numerous fixes will likely have to take place, Sharif said. “There will be a lot of corrective actions as part of us going through the investigation and trying to figure out what actually happened. All of those corrective actions that will be identified for us once we know what actually happened here, we’ll lay out a plan for how to really fix the facility for the future,” he said. “We have to fix the immediate problem before thinking about what happens in the future here.”
Sens. Udall, Heinrich Call for EPA Monitoring Units
Also this week, New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall (D) and Martin Heinrich (D) asked the Environmental Protection Agency to provide a public health analysis and conduct independent tests using mobile environmental monitoring units. “We would appreciate EPA’s analysis of this event, including an assessment of the amount of radiation that has been released into the atmosphere and how those releases compare to EPA standards of exposure that are considered safe and unsafe,” the lamakers wrote in a Feb. 27 letter to the EPA, stating they “ believe the community would benefit from additional information on this situation so that they have the confidence they need that the appropriate federal agencies are providing all possible information and doing everything necessary to ensure their safety.”
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), whose district includes the WIPP site, said he spoke this week with DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz about the situation. “Public health and safety continue to be my top priorities,” he said in a Feb. 27 statement. “Today, I had a very productive conversation with U.S. Energy Secretary Moniz about the situation at WIPP and the need for the Department of Energy to keep the community informed. In light of new announcements, my office is receiving questions from concerned New Mexicans, and we are working to make sure New Mexicans receive the answers they deserve, and to assist concerned constituents in any way we can.”
