The Energy Department is creeping closer to implementing new safeguards that will allow the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Area G transuranic waste processing facility to resume full operations and continue treatment of the problematic waste stream that caused a radiation leak at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) two years ago.
According to a report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) made public Friday, LANL personnel early last month took steps to ensure that Area G’s Dome 375 Permacon building — in which nitrate salt waste of the same sort that leaked radiation into WIPP is stored — does not overheat if a wildfire breaks out nearby.
LANL personnel are working “to ensure the defensible space with respect to vegetation is maintained around the Dome 375 Permacon,” the DNFSB report reads. Ensuring defensible space essentially means paring back local vegetation around the Permacon perimeter.
Wildfires are a real concern at LANL. In 2012, DOE and New Mexico agreed to fast track removal of transuranic waste stored above ground at LANL, in part due to concerns that wildfires in the area could overwhelm waste processing facilities and spread radio-contamination to the surrounding environment.
The precaution to guard against the wildfire hazard is a prescription of a safety document that was supposed to be submitted for final review in June, but now will be delivered to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office later this month, LANL spokesman Peter Hyde told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in July.
DNFSB typically makes its weekly reports about various DOE sites public no more than 35 days after a board representative submits the document.
