DEVELOPMENT OF AN ALTERNATE PATHWAY FOR MATERIALS DESTINED FOR DISPOSITION TO WIPP

The Los Alamos National Laboratory currently has an inventory of process residues that may be viable candidates for disposition to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) located at Carlsbad, New Mexico. A recent “Attractiveness Level D” exemption allows for the discard of specified intractable materials regardless of the per cent plutonium. However, the limits with respect to drum loadings must be met. Cementation is a key component of the aqueous nitrate flowsheet and serves as a “bleed-off” stream for impurities separated from the plutonium during processing operations. The main “feed” to the cementation operations are the “bottoms” from the evaporation process. In the majority of cases, the cemented bottoms contain less than the allowed amount per drum for WIPP acceptance. This project would expand the route to WIPP for items that have no defined disposition path, are difficult to process, have been through multiple passes, have no current recovery operations available to recover the plutonium and that are amenable to cementation. This initial work will provide the foundation for a full scale disposition pathway of the candidate materials. Once the pathway has been expanded and a cementation matrix developed, routine discard activities will be initiated.