Design and use of SNM transportation systems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. [Special Nuclear Materials (SNM)]

The Plutonium Processing Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is located in a building containing approximately 63,000 square feet of laboratory space with an additional 63,000 feet of basement area that is used for heating, ventilation, filtering, storage, and other house'' systems. The building's upper floor is set up in four separate wings with different types of processing occurring both within each wing and between the wings. Because of the diversity of these various processes, material must be moved within and across the various wings. Special Nuclear Material, hereafter referred to as SNM, must always be handled in an enclosed container in order to protect the environment and the workers who are using the material. In order to avoid making repeated transfers of material by an external means, LANL has designed a system whereby most of the wings and rooms in the Plutonium Facility are interconnected by a series of tunnels through which a transportation system or trolley'' operates. This tunnel serves a dual purpose in that it also supplies dry air to the gloveboxes. The tunnels extend the entire length of the building in each wing making a total of four tunnels with an additional tunnel installed such that it connects all four wing tunnels to each other. It can readily be seen that this also creates a problem in that a chimney'' now exists which can cause a fire to spread rapidly from one line or area to another. LANL has designed a series of air and mechanically operated fire doors that are located throughout the tunnel system to prevent this occurrence from happening. Double dropboxes are located at the end of each wing tunnel where the cross tunnel connects. Here, material can be off loaded from a wing trolley and on loaded to the cross trolley for further movement to any other area where it may be needed