Packaging of Plutonium for Long Term Storage

In response to the Nuclear Facilities Safety Defense Board Recommendation 94-1, the Department of Energy (DOE) developed implementation plans for each DOE site to address the stabilization and packaging of their plutonium inventory. A DOE standard was issued in December 1994, DOE-STD-3013-94, “Criteria for Safe Storage of Plutonium Metals and Oxides” that established a consistent set of requirements for each site to use in packaging their plutonium. At Los Alamos, a project team was established which designed and qualified a suitable storage container. The project team established the equipment and procedur s to prepare and package plutonium to meet the long-term storage requirements. We c % nducted a demonstration run with a 2.2 kg plutonium metal item in June 1995 and began routine packaging of plutonium in September 1995. By September 1997, Los Alamos had completed packaging 112 long-term storage containers with over 430 kg of packaged plutonium metal and oxide.