September 07, 2015

LANL Acknowledges Hazardous Waste Permit Noncompliance

By ExchangeMonitor

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) last week voluntarily acknowledged that it had breached regulations set by its hazardous waste permit with the state of New Mexico. Laboratory Director Charles McMillan and National Nuclear Security Administration Los Alamos Field Office Manager Kimberly Davis Lebak noted multiple “instances of non-compliance” in an Aug. 31 letter to state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn. They said the issues came to light during a review of waste management procedures after transuranic waste that originated at LANL was found to be behind a February 2014 radiation release from a storage drum at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. “These non-compliances resulted from processing other legacy mixed transuranic (MTRU) wastes under the same procedures that have been determined to be deficient and were used to remediate the nitrate salt-bearing waste stream associated with the WIPP incident,” according to the letter. LANL and NNSA personnel have determined that the permit breaches do not constitute credible safety hazards to workers at the site or health threats to the public or environment, the officials wrote.

The violations involved four different waste streams at the lab: drummed debris waste, oversized box debris waste, inorganic wastewater treatment sludge, and cemented waste. Among the acts of noncompliance, the LANL/NNS report says, were “unpermitted treatment by use of absorbents in an impermissible manner; unpermitted treatment by neutralization; mixing potentially incompatible materials with waste in containers; and … failure to manage and label waste containers, and meet generator requirements for off-site transportation of potentially ignitable (D001) and corrosive (D002) hazardous wastes (LA-CIN01).”

“These containers have been conservatively assigned D001 and D002 waste codes and they are subject to the storage requirements for corrosive or ignitable waste until further testing can be completed. The New Mexico Environment Department is requiring LANL to implement corrective actions to address all identified permit violations and any other NMED-regulated issues identified in the Extent of Condition Review,” said New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection Division Director Kathryn Roberts in a prepared statement.

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