Safety assessment for TA-48 radiochemical operations

The purpose of this report is to document an assessment performed to evaluate the safety of the radiochemical operations conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory operations area designated as TA-48. This Safety Assessment for the TA-48 radiochemical operations was prepared to fulfill the requirements of US Department of Energy (DOE) Order 5481.1B, ``Safety Analysis and Review System.`` The area designated as TA-48 is operated by the Chemical Science and Technology (CST) Division and is involved with radiochemical operations associated with nuclear weapons testing, evaluation of samples collected from a variety of environmental sources, and nuclear medicine activities. This report documents a systematic evaluation of the hazards associated with the radiochemical operations that are conducted at TA-48. The accident analyses are limited to evaluation of the expected consequences associated with a few bounding accident scenarios that are selected as part of the hazard analysis. Section 2 of this report presents an executive summary and conclusions, Section 3 presents pertinent information concerning the TA-48 site and surrounding area, Section 4 presents a description of the TA-48 radiochemical operations, and Section 5 presents a description of the individual facilities. Section 6 of the report presents an evaluation of the hazards that are associated with the TA-48 operations and Section 7 presents a detailed analysis of selected accident scenarios