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September 09 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine Stimulus funding galvanizes environmental cleanup, creates jobs
Gabriel Gallegos saws through a pipe at the former Tritium Systems Test Assembly Facility at Technical Area 21. Photo by Sandra Valdez Federal stimulus funds totaling $212 million are boosting the Laboratory’s ongoing environmental cleanup projects and creating hundreds of jobs for New Mexicans. “The projects are very important to Los Alamos and surrounding counties and pueblos from both an economic and environmental standpoint,” said Everett Trollinger, federal program director for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) within the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Site Office. “Completing them will be a major step forward in our cleanup responsibilities.” Demolition of Cold War-era buildings A large part of the ARRA funds will go toward demolishing more than 20 vacant buildings and structures in the Lab’s Technical Area 21, including an empty former plutonium research and processing facility, said Allan Chaloupka of the TA-21 Closure Project, who is in charge of building decontamination and decommissioning. Chaloupka has extensive experience in nuclear decommissioning, most recently at Hanford, Washington, with a Department of Energy project managed by Bechtel Hanford, Inc. There, he successfully managed the first full-scale decommissioning of a former plutonium processing facility and oversaw the interim safe storage of a plutonium production reactor and the decommissioning of beryllium-contaminated former fuel-fabrication facilities. At Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, he oversaw the decommissioning of a chemical weapons stockpile. Chaloupka said what he enjoys most about his work at Los Alamos is “the challenge of what we do, the extraordinarily talented employees we put together in teams to safely accomplish this work, and the satisfaction of seeing that the cleanup benefits the Laboratory and the community.” Jobs for New Mexicans In May, the Lab began the competitive bidding process for the demolition work at TA-21. The Laboratory received 11 bids, including 7 from Northern New Mexico businesses, which were given preference in the selection process. “The idea was to use the cleanup funds in a manner that puts them into the local community fairly quickly… to save existing jobs and create new ones,” Chaloupka said. In mid-August, three small businesses—Los Alamos Technical Associates (LATA), Portage Inc., and ARSEC Environmental, LLC—were awarded subcontracts for up to $100 million. A fourth company is expected to be named shortly. The companies will use a streamlined process to bid for a number of individual demolition and cleanup tasks, with most tasks being “fixed price” subcontracts. The Laboratory estimates that at least 100 jobs will be created or saved in this phase alone of ARRA work. Clean up of mystery dump site Recovery Act funding also will allow environmental remediation specialists to clean up the Lab’s first waste disposal area two years ahead of schedule, Chaloupka said. Known as Material Disposal Area B, the site covers about six acres and is fenced off from the public. It operated from 1944 until 1948. Chaloupka explained that because no official waste inventory documentation exists for MDA B, Lab specialists spent the last two years determining what types of waste might be buried there. “We did a lot of detective work,” said Mitch Goldberg of Environmental Programs. Based on old operational records, interviews with former Laboratory employees who worked at TA-21, and geological studies using ground-penetrating radar, scientists determined that materials dumped at the site most likely included clothing, wood, containers, and other materials. “It was expensive to bring materials to Los Alamos back then and people tended to recycle as much as they could,” Goldberg noted. Chaloupka said that less than 200 grams of plutonium 239 are spread over the six-acre site. “To put that in context, about 600 grams of plutonium are contained in a single transuranic high-activity waste drum,” he said. Chaloupka added that site preparations for the remediation effort, such as the construction of a haul road to be used by trucks on site, power distribution, air-monitoring equipment, and storm water pollution-prevention features, have been completed. In addition, personnel supporting the cleanup, such as the Lab’s Emergency Management and Response team and Los Alamos County’s emergency response personnel, have engaged in tabletop emergency exercises to ensure that remediation efforts are conducted safely and with minimal impact on local and area residents and businesses. Future emergency exercises are planned as work continues. The project will be conducted in four operational stages: pre-excavation, excavation, waste handling, and characterization. Chaloupka said, startup activities already are underway, including removal of equipment from buildings slated for demolition and core sampling of the waste buried at MDA B. “This is a very important and highly visible project, and we have lined up some of our best talent to make sure these funds are used as intended,” Chaloupka said. He added that he looks forward to continuing his work on the TA-21 cleanup “so we can make DP Mesa available for some serviceable future use.” — Tatjana K. Rosev Recovery Act-funded environmental work at Los Alamos
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