The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shipped off a bottle of unidentified liquid found around a pothole along a contaminated stretch of a public road for analysis.
On July 8, Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) discovered an intact 500-milliliter amber glass bottle containing liquid during pothole excavation at the Middle DP Road Site, the contractor said in a Monday notice on its road cleanup website.
As part of required procedures, N3B contacted the laboratory’s Emergency Operations Support Center. “Out of an abundance of caution,” the center’s staff instructed N3B to contact the Los Alamos County Fire Department for HazMat support and assistance, according to the statement. The fire department placed the bottle in a secure drum prior to eventual waste characterization sampling.
Work safely resumed at Middle DP Road shortly thereafter, the contractor said.
“I appreciate the quick response by the Fire Department’s Haz Mat team yesterday,” Anne Laurent, Los Alamos County’s acting county manager said in a statement. “At this time, we do not believe that the liquid found poses a health or safety concern.”
In February 2020 radioactive contamination turned up within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already declared fully remediated before its transfer to Los Alamos County from the federal government in 2018. Spurred on by state and local officials, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has N3B checking on 124 potholes along the road for signs of additional contamination.
The Department of Energy is looking at altering procedures for handling low-level radioactive waste containers at the Savannah River Site following a July 1 episode during which tritium off-gassing alarms went off after a container arrived at one section of the complex from another, an agency spokesperson said Friday.
When the container arrived at Savannah River’s Solid Waste Management Facility from the H Area New Manufacturing facility, radiological protection alarms went off.
The work crew “followed safety protocols, backing away from the container,” the spokesperson said.
The off-gassing was determined to come from a small area in the upper portion of the container where the plastic had slipped from a taped area during shipping, the DOE spokesperson said. Employees used long handled tools to safely tape the plastic back into place and subsequent surveys showed no further leakage.
The container was then placed into the Intermediate Level Vault as planned, the agency spokesperson said. No employees were harmed or contaminated during the incident. A fact-finding meeting was held with staff from both the tritium and solid waste areas “to understand the factors involved and determine any corrective actions, which include evaluating the need to revise the relevant procedure,” the spokesperson said.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) continues to stress cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site as he courts rural Ohio voters who live near the former gaseous diffusion plant site.
“The health and wellbeing of our citizens should be the number one priority of the United States government,” said Ryan in a statement released to the NewsWatchman newspaper. “While we are still awaiting results of the Department of Energy’s radiological testing, we know that Pike County has the highest rate of cancer incidence in the State of Ohio and that more needs to be done to protect our fellow Ohioans.”
Ryan has announced plans to seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated in 2022 by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who is retiring from the upper chamber of congress.
Ryan led a public meeting last month to discuss community concerns over ongoing demolition of the X-326 Process Building at Portsmouth. Ryan has also used Congressional hearing to prod Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to have the DOE Office of Environmental Management take more of a direct interest in Pike County when a public school closed its doors two years ago after traces of enriched uranium and neptunium-237 were found on campus.
The acting head of the cleanup office, William “Ike” White has attended a briefing from community leaders and a longtime DOE manager, Candice Robertson, a senior adviser to deputy secretary of energy David Turk, has been made a community liaison.
Three Hanford workers were treated and released in June at a Richland, Washington hospital after potentially being exposed to contaminated soil at the site’s tank farms.
Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), Hanford’s liquid waste contractor, hopes to soon have some test results that will determine what caused a suspicious odor, described as burnt and copperish, company spokeswoman Joan Lucas said this week.
On June 18, nine workers were digging down about one foot into the soil in preparation to install an asphalt barrier over Hanford’s TX Farm, a cluster of 12 underground single-shell tanks. When they smelled the odor, all nine were evaluated on site for potential exposure, and three were sent to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland for one day of further observation.
“Everyone is fine,” Lucas. said. “We don’t think it was tank vapors,”
WRPS leans toward believing the odor came from wastes that leaked into the soil, instead of coming directly from one of the tanks.
The nine workers were wearing full-face respirators without air tanks Lucas said. These are less protective than respirators with tanks. The workers also wore monitors that checked for ammonia, a common chemical in tank vapors. No monitors showed any alarms.
The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is now the owner of the Low Level Waste Repository, according to a government press release Monday.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) received ownership of the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) from UK Nuclear Waste Management Ltd. Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd became a subsidiary of the NDA in March, according to the release.
Consolidating the NDA’s waste management expertise, including LLWR and Radioactive Waste Management, simplifies how the group operates and delivers greater value for the taxpayer, according to the release from the United Kingdom authority.
“LLWR becoming a subsidiary is a significant milestone in building a stronger NDA group,” said NDA Chief Executive Officer David Peattie in the release. “We are transforming the way that we work across the estate, with a focus on sharing and collaboration, while also maximizing the strength and scale of the group.
The Low Level Waste Repository near West Cumbrian is the only disposal site for low level radioactive waste in the United Kingdom.
The Los Alamos County Council this week appointed Steve Lynne as its new county manager effective Thursday, replacing the recently-retired Harry Burgess.
Lynne has been deputy county manager since 2012 and has worked in various county posts, including chief financial officer and budget officer, since 1996. In his early years with the county Lynne served as the financial information liaison with the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Burgess retired at the end of May following 10 years as Los Alamos county manager and, before that, serving six years as city administrator for Carlsbad, N.M., near DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
