Santa Fe Standard

The Los Alamos National Laboratory has postponed work on a venting system at Technical Area 54 that would have released radioactive vapors into the atmosphere.

The operations were scheduled to begin on April 17, but due to the statewide stay-at-home order issued by the governor amid the COVID-19 pandemic the decision was made to delay the work indefinitely. 

“To ensure safety, we need a full complement of staff, some of whom are currently working from home,” National Nuclear Security Administration spokeswoman Toni Chiri recently told the Santa Fe New Mexican. 

The work was focused on four flanged tritium waste containers (FTWC), which are storage containers with high pressures. The FTWCs were going to be used to ventilate gases with hydrogen, oxygen and radioactive tritium. They hold 50 gallons and can be stored in 85-gallon steel drums, which allows easy handling and makes them easy to dispose of. 

The tritium was to be in the form of water vapor or hydrogen gas. 

A document sent to the EPA in 2019 said that the FTWCs have a large amount of tritium inventory, which has contaminated parts of the metal and the sieve media. The molecular sieve media is a material similar to pebbles that absorbs water. 

Given enough time, the tritiated water vapor that the media absorbs can escape into the FTWC headspace. 

The four FTWCs were scheduled to be ventilated one at a time and on-site equipment was going to be used to lessen the amount of tritium released into the atmosphere. 

“We have emissions controls to capture some of the tritium, and active monitoring in place to ensure that we protect public health and safety and do not exceed regulatory limits,” Chiri told the New Mexican last month.

Dangerous conditions can result from the tritium storage in the FTWCs, which is why venting them is so important.