Acid waste line removed from land transfer project

Contact: John Bass, jbass@lanl.gov, (505) 665-9204 (02-096)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 21, 2002 -- The Land Transfer Project met another major milestone this month when the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory's Deactivation and Decommissioning program began removing portions of a 3-inch carbon steel waste line that was used to transfer liquid industrial and radioactive waste from Technical Area 21 to the radioactive liquid waste facility at TA-50.

TA-21, located at the eastern end of DP Mesa near the central business district of Los Alamos, houses an area of ongoing tritium research that includes the Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA) and the Tritium Science and Fabrication Facility (TSFF). Operations at these two facilities are being moved to the Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility (WETF) at TA-16. With the reduction in operations at these two facilities, the acid waste line was flushed with clean water, plugged and abandoned.

Estimated at $800,000, the acid-waste-line-removal project involves two sections of line adjacent to or crossing lands to be transferred to Los Alamos County. Public law 105-119 was passed by Congress in 1997 requiring the Laboratory to identify land that is no longer necessary for its current and future mission. DOE identified 10 parcels that total approximately 15 percent of the 27,500-acre laboratory. Roughly half of that land will be turned over the Pueblo of San Ildefonso and the remainder to Los Alamos County.

Two sub-parcels of these lands, identified as DP South and TA-21 West, are crossed by portions of the acid waste line. Los Alamos County requested the line be removed from these lands before they are transferred to county ownership.

The removal operation began with the acquisition of necessary environmental, safety, and health evaluations and an excavation permit. Four potholes were dug at various locations along the line to determine if the soils were contaminated and to determine the physical and radiological condition of the pipe. Soil samples and pipe sections were submitted to Benchmark Environmental for chemical and radiological evaluation. Analysis indicated the soils were clean and could be placed back into the excavations.

The actual removal of the pipe is being done in sections. First, a pothole is dug at intervals of about 120 feet. The pipe is then cut and the pipe section is literally pulled from the ground. This removal technique causes minimal disturbance to the ground surface, but the disturbed areas will be back-filled, graded and reseeded at the completion of the project. The removed pipe is sectioned further, packaged and disposed at Area G as low-level radioactive waste.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

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