The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico last year shipped 5,058,687 kilograms of low-level radioactive waste off-site for disposal at federal and commercial properties.
Operations at storied nuclear weapons laboratory generate low-level radioactive waste, transuranic waste, mixed low-level waste, and mixed transuranic waste, according to the 2017 Annual Site Environmental Report for Los Alamos.
The low-level waste in 2017 was sent to DOE’s Nevada Nuclear Security Site and two private disposal operations: an EnergySolutions site in Utah and the Waste Control Specialists facility in Texas. There was no breakdown of how much waste went to each location.
The environmental report, issued Sept. 27, also notes LANL made one shipment of defense transuranic waste in November 2017 to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. That was the first such shipment from the lab since WIPP resumed taking waste from other DOE facilities in April 2017 following its February 2014 underground radiation release.
The 310-page document provides a status update for operations at LANL overseen by the department’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages cleanup across the DOE nuclear complex, and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is charged with upkeep of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. The document meets DOE’s requirements for environmental, safety, and health reporting.
The report also notes the changeover in contractors for both day-to-day operations and legacy cleanup at Los Alamos.
Los Alamos National Security (LANS) is ending its 12-year run as the lab’s management and operations contractor effective Nov. 1, after having already passed the baton for legacy environmental management in April to Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B).
The new lab management prime will be Triad National Security, comprised of Battelle, Texas A&M University, and the University of California. The latter institution is the sole holdover from the LANS team.
Before wrapping up work at Los Alamos, LANS last November completed processing of all 60 potentially ignitable drums of remediated nitrate salt waste drums. The problem drums at Los Alamos were found to have come from the same bad batch as the breached drum that caused the radiation incident at WIPP. Originally, the waste drums had been mistakenly packaged with organic kitty litter that later mixed with the nitrate salts in an explosive combination.
These drums, and other previously unremediated containers that have also been fixed, are awaiting eventual shipment to WIPP for disposal.
Material Disposal Area G at Technical Area 54 is the lab’s traditional disposal site; in 2017 it held 492 kilograms of low-level waste, according to the report. The laboratory and the New Mexico Environment Department have been working for years to plan its closure.
Currently, waste is not being disposed at Area G and there are no plans to resume disposal, according to a DOE spokesperson.
The report indicated 2017 airborne tritium levels at LANL, from past nuclear weapon testing, were on par with recent years and below DOE and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. The highest tritium reading was 0.3 percent of the EPA public dose limit.
The 75-year-old facility is located in north-central New Mexico, about 25 miles northwest of Santa Fe and 60 miles northeast of Albuquerque. It was founded in 1943 as Project Y of the Manhattan Project.
The laboratory reported 25 instances of noncompliance with its state hazardous waste facility permit during fiscal 2017. Most of the infractions involved missed inspections and improper labeling of containers, according to the report.