DECOMMISSIONING THE HIGH PRESSURE TRITIUM LABORATORY AT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
In May 0f 2000, the Cerro Grande wild land fire burned approximately 48,000 acres in and around Los Alamos. In addition to the many buildings that were destroyed in the town site, many structures were also damaged and destroyed within the 43 square miles that comprise the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). A special Act of Congress provided funding to remove Laboratory structures that were damaged by the fire, or that could be threatened by subsequent catastrophic wild land fires. The High Pressure Tritium Laboratory (HPTL) is located at Technical Area (TA) 33, building 86 in the far southeast corner of the Laboratory property. It is immediately adjacent to Bandelier National Park. Because it was threatened by both the Cerro Grande fire in 2000, and the 16,000- acre Dome fire in 1996, the former tritium processing facility was placed on the list of facilities scheduled for Decontamination and Decommissioning under the Cerro Grande Rehabilitation Project. The work was performed through the Facilities and Waste Operations (FWO) Division and is integrated with other Laboratory D&D efforts. The primary demolition contractor was Clauss Construction of San Diego, California. Earth Tech Global Environmental Services of San Antonio, Texas was sub-contracted to Clauss Construction, and provided radiological decontamination support to the project. Although the forty-seven year old facility had been in a state of safe-shutdown since operations ceased in 1990, a significant amount of tritium remained in the rooms where process systems were located. Tritium was the only radiological contaminant associated with this facility. Since no specific regulatory standards have been set for the release of volumetrically contaminated materials, concentration guidelines were derived in order to meet other established regulatory criteria. A tritium removal system was developed for this project with the goal of reducing the volume of tritium concentrated in the concrete of the building. The derived concentration guidelines, combined with the tritium removal system that was developed for this project, provided a significant timesaving for decontamination as well as an overall cost savings for waste disposal.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Earth Tech Global Environmental 110 Broadway, Suite 320 San Antonio, Texas 78205 (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 826196
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waste Management 2003 Symposium, Tucson, AZ (US), 02/23/2003--02/27/2003; Other Information: PBD: 27 Feb 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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