New Laboratory facility to support Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Contact: John Bass, bassvid@lanl.gov, (505) 665-9204

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 10, 2001 -- A new research program for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will apply advanced laboratory capabilities to studies of the chemistry of materials important for geologic repositories and will strengthen the field of repository science.

The program is a cooperative effort of Los Alamos National Laboratory Carlsbad Operations and the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center of New Mexico State University to develop new research and laboratory capabilities to support WIPP’s scientific needs. Sandia National Laboratories’ Carlsbad Programs Group will also collaborate in this program and expand their ongoing WIPP experimental program.

"This project dovetails with DOE’s intent to conduct more of its efforts in support of WIPP right here in Carlsbad, and make Carlsbad one of the few state-of-the-art centers for repository science in the world," said Roger Nelson, Chief Scientist for the DOE Carlsbad Field Office.

WIPP, located 26 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, became the nation’s first operating underground repository for permanent disposal of defense-generated transuranic waste on March 26, 1999. LANL Carlsbad Operations serves as the Senior Technical Advisor for waste characterization and provides core scientific and engineering expertise to DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office.

The new research program focuses on actinide chemistry, or the chemical behavior and properties of those elements heavier than radium. Actinide chemistry is important to understanding the long-term performance of the WIPP repository.

These mostly radioactive exotic elements attempt to become more stable by throwing off particles and energy from their overcrowded nuclei. This actinide chemistry activity can be applied to defense purposes and energy production but it increases the challenge of handling these elements. The new laboratory collaboration seeks to understand the behavior of these elements to a degree never before achieved.

The research program includes repository science investigations to support WIPP, reduce costs and ensure its safe and economical use far into the future. LANL is obtaining and relocating new research technologies to Carlsbad, such as the mobile Contaminant Analysis Automation laboratory, and integrating them with the already extensive laboratory facilities at the NMSU’s Carlsbad center. The CAA trailer was relocated from Los Alamos and installed over the summer and is currently undergoing system checkout and calibration.

The Department of Energy Environmental Management Office of Science and Technology originally developed the CAA laboratory with Los Alamos to establish a moveable lab that can be quickly sent to a site in need of specific chemical or contaminant characterization and analysis. The CAA goal was to develop automated laboratories that could run continuously, thereby reducing the time required to analyze environmental samples. Automation lowers costs and greatly increases the quickness and precision of each sampling and analysis process relevant to research into remediation and disposal.

Immediate research activities that will begin using the automated laboratory include investigations into the behavior of plutonium under many possible subsurface conditions in the presence of various materials, such as iron. Other investigations will develop new methods to package and treat radioactive materials to make them more benign and easier to handle. Still others will investigate new methods to monitor the subsurface at WIPP to increase safety and decrease costs. Both LANL and Sandia National

Laboratories teams in Carlsbad intend to make use of the CAA laboratory as they conduct experiments in actinide chemistry over the next several years. NMSU will provide instrument support and facility operations as well as perform scientific investigations.

Joel Webb at the NMSU Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center and Jim Conca at LANL Carlsbad Operations both agreed that WIPP use of the moveable CAA laboratory offers many advantages over the previous strategy of conducting this research in more conventional laboratory settings. They noted that it preserves the existing CEMRC capabilities, accelerates project schedules, reduces costs and will expand the scientific studies possible for WIPP.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Additional news releases from the Environmental Science and Waste Technology (E) Division