LANL misses waste shipment deadline to prevent future errors

By Tris DeRoma
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 10:42 am (Updated: April 3, 7:25 pm)

Los Alamos National Laboratory officials said Tuesday the decision to miss the state’s deadline to ship hazardous waste was made intentionally, even though the violation could cost the lab up to $1 million in fines, to ensure lab officials could find a solution to prevent duplicating the same shipping error in the future.

“We’re always striving to do the right thing. We know we’re not perfect, but we always do our best to be compliant. In November, we caught numbering errors on two hazardous waste drums that we self-reported,” said LANL Spokesman Peter Hyde. “In the interests of safety, we took the precautionary measure of pausing certain shipping until we were confident that we had fully addressed the issue. We are working closely with the state to evaluate our processes and procedures to make sure that our shipping program is in compliance with all regulations.”

In November 2017, LANL sent a shipment of one incorrectly labeled hazardous waste drum to a waste treatment facility in Henderson, Colorado, called Veolia ES Technical Solutions.

LANL officials discovered the error and notified Veolia on Dec. 12, the same day that Veolia acknowledged they received the drum.

The drum contained a mix of low-level waste and hazardous waste, which included gloves, clothing and low-level radioactive waste.

On Dec. 18, LANL paused all waste shipments to re-evaluate what happened.

The reassessment included a wall-to-wall inventory and developing corrective actions, according to LANL officials.

On Feb. 8 LANL contacted NMED to tell them they weren’t ready to resume shipping, because a solution to the mislabeling problem was not yet identified.

They also told the NMED that, as a result of the pause, five barrels of waste being held at Technical Area 55 would go over the storage deadline.

According to LANL officials, NMED then told them that the five drums in question would exceed the storage deadline as a result of LANL pausing shipments.

LANL decided to break the deadline anyway, since a corrective action had not been developed yet.

On Feb. 28, the laboratory implemented the corrective action, and lifted the shipping pause.

The laboratory has adopted a new practice to ensure that shipping manifests are correct.

LANL ships 2,000 and 3,500 barrels of waste annually to various hazardous waste sites around the country.  

Greg Mello, executive director of a New Mexico nuclear and environmental safety organization called Los Alamos Study Group, said LANL should have been more forthcoming.

“Why did it take LANL so long for the laboratory to tell people that they were not shipping these wastes within the legally required timeframe? There’s always some sort of ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse,” Mello said. “Covering important information with a label only happens because people aren’t careful.”