Weeks before it was awarded a six-month extension for legacy nuclear cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, contractor Los Alamos National Security was slightly more than halfway through processing canisters of problem waste.
As of early September, the lab’s Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility (WCRRF) was treating the 34th of 60 drums of inappropriately remediated nitrate salts, according to a weekly site report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, dated Sept. 8 and made public this week.
The Energy Department on Tuesday did not respond to a request for an updated figure.
The DNFSB report noted a “lapse in required fire watch coverage during shift turnover” at WCRRF. Corrective actions were taken to strengthen the process surrounding shift change, it said.
DOE last week announced a six-month extension for LANS’ environmental management contract, valued at $65 million and keeping it on the job through March 30, 2018.
Los Alamos National Security, the management and operations prime at LANL, is a consortium of Bechtel National, AECOM, BWXT Technologies, and the University of California.
The extended contract will allow LANS to continue work on the containers, which hold a combustible mix of nitrate salts and organic kitty litter that caused a drum from the lab to burst open and release radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February 2014. Another 29 drums of unremediated waste must also be treated, with LANS anticipated completing the entire project next April.
