Weapons Complex Monitor Vol. 31 No. 40
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Weapons Complex Monitor
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October 16, 2020

Los Alamos Studying ‘Potential Energetic’ TRU Waste Issue Flagged by DNFSB

By Staff Reports

Officials at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory are looking into Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board concerns that the New Mexico site should do more to minimize the risk of a transuranic waste drum explosion.

The board, in a letter dated Sept. 24, found that safety bases for both DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Office of Environmental Management (EM) facilities Los Alamos “do not consistently or appropriately consider a potential energetic chemical reaction involving transuranic waste.”

As a result, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said Los Alamos National Laboratory and its contractors should do more to minimize chances of container failures such as the one that resulted in a underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February 2014, or the rupture of four overheated drums in April 2018 at the Idaho National Laboratory.

The letter said the hazard analyses lack systematic evaluations of the chemical compatibility of transuranic waste streams. Also, analyses at Los Alamos, do not “defensibly estimate the quantity of radioactive material that may be released” during an accident.

Finally, some facilities store transuranic waste “without any engineered controls beyond the waste container,” the board says in the letter. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board letter said it raised these sorts of concerns about transuranic waste handling previously with the Department of Energy in a January letter. “Multiple layers of protection” should be employed, according to the board. 

“NNSA and DOE/EM are working to provide the DNFSB with their requested information in a timely manner,” a spokesperson for EM in Los Alamos said by email Tuesday. “The DNFSB plays an important role in ensuring the highest standards of safety at our sites and we look forward to our continued relationship.”

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