Work is still suspended on a new underground utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico following a Nov. 20 accident, in which no one was injured, where a container of equipment fell about 2,200 feet underground.
A detailed inspection of the shaft and equipment will be performed, followed by any needed repairs, a DOE spokesperson said in a Wednesday reply to an Exchange Monitor inquiry. “In the meantime, DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office and its contractor, Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, are working with the utility shaft subcontractor to implement corrective actions.”
To date, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and its contractors have not been issued any violations by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, the spokesperson said.
The environmental prime for the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky removed another 1 million pounds of the hazardous refrigerant R-114, better known by the brand name Freon, during 2023, the agency said this week.
Removing that much of the refrigerant has an environmental benefit akin to curbing greenhouse gasses by taking 10,000 cars off the road in a year, DOE said in a Dec. 19 news release. Jacobs-led Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership removed a similar amount in 2022. It was shipped to a Veolia facility in Texas.
Lots of refrigerant was used at Paducah to control temperatures during uranium enrichment operations, which ended in 2014, DOE said. Over 50% of the 8 million pounds of R-114 onsite has been shipped and disposed of already, with another one million scheduled in 2024, the agency said.
Los Alamos Technical Associates, a longtime Department of Energy and nuclear contractor, has a new logo and website, the company announced Tuesday.
“Our mission remains to make the world a better place by protecting people and our natural resources,”. Los Alamos Technical Associates (LATA) CEO Robin Beard, said in a press release. The new website and logo can be found here.
