Beetles Attack Plutonium Containers at SRS!!!

With 13 metric tons of plutonium stored in thousands of 9975 plutonium storage containers (holding 3013 cans – as shown in photo) packed into the old K-Reactor at SRS it’s good to know that the beetles won’t be attacking them!

Summary
Package 9975-03996 was identified as being infested with drugstore beetles in April 2012. It was shipped to SRNL, where the possibility of using acoustic emission detection to detect the beetles was explored. This technology has potential for this application, although additional work would be needed to improve the sensitivity and automate signal processing to make it practical for use with a large number of packages.
In April 2014, the infested package was re-opened and examined. Compared to the regions photographed in 2012, relatively little additional damage was observed. The overall pattern, extent and rate of damage appear consistent with that observed previously in two infested packages from Hanford. It was then decided that further observations of this package be terminated. The remaining beetles were killed by freezing, and the package was rehabilitated and made available for service.