A government report released this week blasted the safety procedures for handling radioactive waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, following a leak that prompted a shutdown in February.
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Among the critical points made in the report, the DOE accused the laboratory of permitting the introduction of potentially incompatible materials in waste drums to be stored at WIPP, and a failure of the lab’s safety procedures to prevent this from occurring.“Our review identified several major deficiencies in LANL’s procedures for the development and approval of waste packaging and remediation techniques that may have contributed to the radiological event,” said the report. “Of particular concern, not all waste management procedures at LANL were properly vetted through the established procedure revision process nor did they conform to established environmental requirements.”
There was also concern about how the lab was disposing of volatile mixtures of nitrate salts and organic matter which a 2000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report found to be “inherently hazardous.”
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Laboratory spokesman Matthew Nerzig declined to comment on why safety policies were violated.
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