Construction of a roughly $100 shipping-and-handling facility for radiologically contaminated equipment and soil at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is generally well run, but the Energy Department and its prime contractor at the New Mexico site should tighten construction standards and increase project oversight, DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) said Jan. 29.
The EA report details a May investigation of the Transuranic Waste Facility that J. B. Henderson Construction Co. of Albuquerque is building as a subcontractor to Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the consortium that manages and operates the lab for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The report said LANS should limit the amount of entrained air in concrete mixtures used to build the new waste facility — more air makes concrete easier to work with, but can also make it crack more easily — and require two kinds of tests instead of one to confirm soil at the construction site has been packed down tightly enough to support the building being erected there.
The report also said the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Acquisition and Project Management, which oversees construction of new nuclear facilities, “has not established and implemented an effective issues management program” and should tune up its oversight to comply with DOE standards for finding and correcting problems that arise during construction.
In a March 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, DOE said LANL’s Transuranic Waste Facility would open between April 30, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2018, and would cost some $300 million to operate for 50 years, on top of its $100 million construction tab.
The Transuranic Waste Facility will process waste bound for underground interment at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M., some 300 miles south of LANL. For now, LANL will continue to store both new and old transuranic waste at Material Disposal Area G, the lab’s most contaminated storage area. New transuranic waste has been piling up at LANL since WIPP stopped receiving shipments after an underground fire and radiation release in 2014. DOE plans to reopen WIPP in December.
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