The Triad National Security,*** the company in charge of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) operations in 2018 lost track of 250 barrels of mixed hazardous waste on their way to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad. Mixed waste contains low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials. Failing to track such a high volume of waste is an egregious error that falls in line with the lab’s long history of serious missteps.  “The fact that LANL has mischaracterized, misplaced, mis-inventoried — or whatever — 250 barrels of waste is pretty astounding,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.

Still, Triad has committed less than a tenth of the violations that its predecessor, Los Alamos National Security LLC, used to average in a given year.  A disastrous “kitty litter” incident happened under Los Alamos National Security, in which a waste barrel was packaged in error with a volatile blend of organic cat litter and nitrate salts, causing the container to burst and leak radiation at the Southern New Mexico storage site. WIPP closed for almost three years, and the cleanup cost about $2 billion.

***Triad is a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), The Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and The Regents of the University of California (UC).

Excerpts from Scott Wyland State report: LANL lost track of 250 barrels of nuke waste, Santa Fe New Mexican, Dec. 9, 2019