In Photos: Advisory Board Partakes in Los Alamos Legacy Waste Site Tour
Members of the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board along with Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office and Newport News Nuclear, BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) staff visit Overlook Park in White Rock, New Mexico, overlooking the Rio Grande, where N3B Surface Water and Stormwater Manager Karly Rodriguez, far right, leads discussions about geography and the processes of water sampling and remediation.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — Members of the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board (NNMCAB) recently saw firsthand the work of the legacy cleanup mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). NNMCAB members visited several sites at LANL and one in White Rock, learning about the progress being made by the Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) and Newport News Nuclear, BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), the legacy cleanup contractor at LANL, in water and soil investigation and remediation; installation of groundwater wells for hexavalent chromium monitoring; and retrieval and size-reduction of corrugated metal pipes (CMPs) containing cemented, radioactive material.
The contact-handled transuranic waste team from Newport News Nuclear, BWXT-Los Alamos staff multiple briefing stations at Technical Area 54, Area G at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board members learn about the process of retrieving buried corrugated metal pipes (CMPs), tools used for safety management and detection, the process of size reducing each 20-foot-long CMP using a hydraulic shear, and loading size-reduced pieces into waste boxes and preparing them for eventual shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board members hear from Newport News Nuclear, BWXT-Los Alamos Contact-Handled Transuranic Waste Deputy Program Manager Ellen Gammon and Waste Management Senior Director Carolina Soaterna at Technical Area 54, Area G inside Dome 375, about loading cut pieces of corrugated metal pipes into standard waste boxes.
Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board members visit Mortandad Canyon in Los Alamos, where Troy Thomson, Environmental Remediation program manager, Newport News Nuclear, BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), discusses the geography of the area along with the challenges and accomplishments the Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office and N3B have had while drilling and installing wells in this terrain.
Tom McCrory, senior geologist, Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office, far right, in front, speaks to the geology of the layers of rock in Mortandad Canyon, including Bandelier Tuff, Cerros del Rio Basalt and the Puye Formation, and the challenges in drilling 1,000-foot wells at the site. Standing in front of well R-45 in Mortandad Canyon, McCrory discusses the purposes of the wells installed throughout the Los Alamos National Laboratory site shown on a map displayed for the group.