Processing of potentially combustible waste containers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory could be finished by Thanksgiving, a source in New Mexico said this week. That would be ahead of the latest official schedule for completion in December.
The source said an official with the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management told the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board on Oct. 25 that 52 of the 60 remediated nitrate salt drums had been processed and the remaining eight should be done by Thanksgiving.
The DOE official reported that lab management and cleanup contractor Los Alamos National Security plans to start on 29 drums of unremediated nitrate salts in late November and be finished with those by the end of March 2018.
One month earlier, a DOE official told the same advisory board that LANS was on the 43rd of the most troublesome 60 containers, which contain a mix of nitrate salts and kitty litter much like the lab-origin drum that in 2014 burst open and released radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The Energy Department could not immediately be reached for confirmation of the latest numbers.
The March date is significant given that DOE recently announced a six-month, $65 million extension for LANS’ environmental management contract at Los Alamos, keeping the contractor on the job through March 30, 2018.
LANS had missed earlier schedule targets for processing of the remediated and unremediated wastes of June 30 and September 30, 2017, respectively. It earlier had expected to finish treating the remediated nitrate salts by Dec. 22 and the unremediated nitrate salts by April 10 of next year, according to a recent report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Los Alamos National Security is a consortium of Bechtel National, AECOM, BWXT Technologies, and the University of California.
