LBNL Building 51

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Old Town Demolition, Building 51, and Bevatron D&D

Perma-Fix continues to perform field activities at LBNL which includes serving as the Integration Contractor involved in: Work Planning & Development, Radiological Protection Support including Final Status Surveys, remedial activities and all waste management support including implementation of our mobile NNSS program.

We served as the key management company in partnership with Clauss Construction performing the decommissioning, demolition, and removal of Building B51, the Bevatron, and associated structures and annexes at LBNL. Building B-51 and the Bevatron were constructed in early 1950s and ceased operations in 1993. It was the world's largest particle accelerator when operational in 1954 with a cost over $9 million to build.

Project Details

Our responsibilities included management of the project; performance of project controls, accounting, and scheduling; programmatic development and implementation of a radiological control and protection program; facility characterization (including over 13,500 tons of shield blocks and 12,500 Bevatron components, as well as the structure, slabs, tunnels and sub-slab soil); engineering design of the approach for dismantlement of the shield blocks and the design/demolition for the facility and sub-slab stabilization and retaining wall; decontamination of radiological and chemical contamination hot-spots within the structure; full-scale waste characterization, profiling, manifesting, shipping, and disposal; remediation of below-grade contaminated soils and sediments; construction of the retaining wall/soil nail wall to hold back adjacent hillsides following demolition and removal; and final status survey (FSS) and release of the site following demolition, removal, and remediation activities.

We performed the deactivation of the more than 20 electrical and mechanical utilities that fed the building and managed the characterization and abatement/decontamination of beryllium. We removed, characterized, surveyed, shipped, and disposed at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and EnergySolutions over 750 tons of legacy LLW and MLLW as well as approximately 200 tons of industrial waste and performed dismantlement and removal of shield blocks and Bevatron components. We managed the removal, characterization, survey, shipment, and disposal at NNSS of over 9,000 tons of activated shield blocks and approximately 600 tons of activated accelerator components. Perma-Fix's wholly-owned subsidiary M&EC provided full-time on-site waste certification and shipping support.

In total, more than 29,600 tons of Bevatron demolition material was disposed of from LBNL to NNSS in over 1,420 shipments. The project has logged over 200,000 man hours with no first aids, lost-time injuries, recordable incidents, and zero loss time accidents/zero OSHA violations. As a result of M&EC's performance, the Office of Environmental Management at the Nevada Site Office presented M&EC's corporate WCO with a certificate of appreciation.

Beginning in 2002, Perma-Fix provided waste management services to LBNL, including on-site waste certification and shipping support of decontamination and decommissioning activities for wastes destined for the NNSS as well as on-site waste identification, packaging, shipment for treatment, and final disposal of miscellaneous lab-pack quantity waste streams requiring disposal. All four of Perma-Fix's treatment facilities have provided treatment services for LBNL waste streams.