Limited record keeping at the old Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado might have factored into an April 2018 waste drum “explosion” at the Idaho National Laboratory, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Chairman Bruce Hamilton said Tuesday.
There were “marginal records kept” on drums of sludge waste buried at INL for years before workers opened and repackaged the four drums that overheated and blew off their lids on April 11, 2018, Hamilton said in testimony before the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.
The old records from Rocky Flats were not always explicit on “what was kept in which drums that were buried,” Hamilton told subcommittee Chairman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).
“It would seem by 2018 we should know how to store nuclear waste,” Cooper said.
The drums overheated and popped open, spewing radioactive material inside the Accelerated Retrieval Project No. 5 (ARP-5) facility within the lab’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex. “I call that an explosion. Maybe that’s a politically charged word,” Hamilton said.
There were no injuries, as no one was in the facility when the incident occurred after 10 p.m.
“The folks I talked to back home want zero defect in the handling of nuclear material. Zero,” Cooper said.
Hamilton said there is no way to achieve “zero” risk within the DOE weapons complex. “The only way to have zero risk is not to do anything.”
Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White concurred, saying her office is working to learn everything it can from the accident and ensure it won’t be repeated.
