Over the past seven-plus years, the Department of Energy’s legacy waste cleanup contractor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shipped more than 20,000 cubic meters of waste offsite.
That figure, which reflects the period between April 30, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2025, was posted as part of a Sept. 10 slide presentation by contractor Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B).
N3B took over legacy waste cleanup in April 2018 at Los Alamos, previously overseen by the lab’s then-management contractor. N3B has a $2.2-billion contract, according to a recent DOE contract chart. Last December DOE exercised its final two-year option on the existing contract, keeping N3B on the job through April 2028.
The Sept. 10 presentation was put together by Ellen Gammon, who is the manager in charge of N3B’s contact-handled transuranic waste program. Earlier this year, N3B sent its first batch of transuranic waste derived from corrugated metal pipes to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad for disposal. Altogether, transuranic waste accounts for about 700 cubic meters of the total while low-level mixed waste accounts for nearly 15,000 cubic meters, according to the presentation.
The total amount of waste shipped offsite by N3B since April 2018 would be a football-field long and nearly 13 feet deep, according to the presentation.
