Year
2003
Abstract
A deviation has been granted by DOE/NNSA to allow termination of safeguards on some plutonium bearing residues that are currently stored in the vault at the Plutonium Facility (Technical Area 55) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Direct discard of these items will help alleviate the issue of limited vault space availability, lower exposure to site workers, and address vault container challenges. New procedures are being implemented to streamline the process of removing these items from the vault, evaluating these items to variance criteria and then preparing them for off-site disposition that could include shipment and permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The goal of the program is to evaluate at least sixteen items per week from the vault. The Nuclear Material Management Group prepares nuclear material feed lists to identify Attractiveness Level D plutonium bearing residues for compliance with the deviation. Each item selected must meet certain criteria. The item must be assigned to an item description (IDES) code as specified by the reference table in the deviation. The quantity of plutonium must be known as well as the concentration of plutonium in the item. Once the feed lists are created, they are submitted to the Waste Management Group for assignment of initial acceptable knowledge. Acceptable knowledge (AK) is used to compliment sampling and analysis to characterize transuranic (TRU) waste. Any item requiring additional verification measurements will be sent to the NDA laboratory. Items will be selected from the feed list and moved from the vault into a glovebox for evaluation. At this time, it will be determined if the item should be processed. If the item needs to be processed, it will be returned to the vault if no process capability is currently available for the item. If item will be discarded, it is visually examined, bagged out and sent to the NDA laboratory for verification measurements. The item is then ready for final disposition.