ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A tranche of the same kind of transuranic waste that leaked radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014 could be cleaned up and ready to ship out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory next summer, a Department of Energy official said here.
There are still some 60 barrels of what DOE calls improperly remediated nitrate salts at the department facility in Northern New Mexico. The barrels and their contents are substantially identical to the one that burst open and contaminated parts of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) two years ago.
“We’re going through the preparations for the treatment of the nitrate salts,” Doug Hintze, manager of DOE Environmental Management’s Los Alamos Field Office, said in a an audience question-and-answer session after a panel discussion at the 2016 National Cleanup Summit. “Readiness reviews will be conducted in the December or January time frame, and we’re expecting to start the treatment in the February or March time frame so that we can complete it in the summer.”
The barrels Hintze referred to, and the one that blew open at WIPP, were packed with organic kitty litter intended to keep the waste inside dry. Instead, in the case of the barrel that burst open in WIPP’s Panel 7 in 2014, the organic material reacted with the nitrate salts within, leading to a small explosion.
While the nitrate salts now at LANL might be cleaned up by next summer, they probably will not be ready to ship to WIPP until some time between 2018 and 2022, Hintze said.
The barrels of potentially problematic nitrate salts at LANL are only the tip of the iceberg for that particularly pestiferous stream of transuranic waste.
More than 100 containers of similarly packaged nitrate salts are stored at Waste Control Specialists’ commercially owned and operated storage site near Andrews, Texas, about 1 mile from New Mexico’s southeast border. In WIPP’s Panel 6 and Panel 7 disposal areas, there are more than 300 containers holding organic cat litter and nitrate salts.
The waste already in the mine will not be disturbed, but what will happen with the cache in the custody of Waste Control Specialists has yet to be determined. A 2014 Nuclear Regulatory Commission order allows Waste Control Specialists to store the LANL waste only until Dec. 23, 2016. In March, the company requested a two-year extension from the NRC because WIPP will not begin accepting new waste shipments until some time in 2017.
“We’re looking at what exactly would be required to move that waste,” Todd Shrader, manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, said in the audience Q&A alongside Hintze. “We haven’t made any final decisions on that.”
Even if the NRC grants the extension, Waste Control Specialists will also need an extension on its LANL waste storage contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership: DOE’s prime contractor for WIPP operations. The contract, awarded in 2014, runs through March 2017 and would be worth $25.4 million, if Nuclear Waste Partnership exercises the contract’s last remaining six-month option. The current option, the contract’s third, expires on Sept. 30.
