Page 22 - Enclosure Fall-Winter 2023-24

LESSONS LEARNED
Update By: Stanley Trujillo
Lessons Learned Committee Chair

he air is cool, and the leaves are changing colors, which Fortunately, the American Glovebox Society is a resource
Tmeans fall is in the air! This is my favorite time of the year. to all in the glovebox industry to assist with past operating
This past summer’s heat was brutal, and I, for one, am ready experiences (lessons learned and best practices).
for cooler weather.
If you would like to join the Lessons Learned committee,
At the July 2023 AGS conference, there was a lot of please contact get in touch with the AGS Executive Office.
discussion on the importance of knowledge transfer and
Also, please note the new link and website for OPEXShare
knowledge capture. A great number of folks are retiring
if you haven’t already updated your bookmarks – https://
from the glovebox industry, and an even greater number are
doeopexshare.doe.gov/
being hired.
I look forward to seeing everyone again next summer in
Our lessons learned committee met in early October to
Boston!
discuss what the sub-committee could work on and possibly
present at the convention in Boston in 2024. One idea that Stanley Trujillo
was brought up was to consider how old gloveboxes are AGS Lessons Learned Committee Chair v
removed and discarded as new gloveboxes are designed
and put into use. To get rid of many older gloveboxes, they
must be size-reduced (cut into smaller pieces) to meet waste
packaging requirements.
I recently acquired a new position at Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL), where I support the restart of
the Waste Characterization Reduction and Repackaging
Facility (WCRRF) for TA-55. Here, we will be size-reducing
gloveboxes to dispose of. I am curious to see if any other
DOE sites may be decommissioning gloveboxes. If so, I’d
ask that you share how this is being done, including the tools
and techniques used.
Additionally, I ran across a lesson recently that was
posted in OPEXShare. The lesson spoke to a 2020 report
that was issued on operational lessons learned during
decommissioning and how more than 750 lessons were
identified and tabulated from multiple viewpoints. The views,
insights, and lessons learned were sought from different
sources across the world, including the USA, Canada, Japan,
the UK, France, Germany, and Eastern Europe.

A couple of things that jumped out to me, including:
• To an experienced decommissioning eye, many lessons
learned appeared to be common sense. The fact that
they are repeated constantly across organizations and
countries implies that this is not the case, and the same
lessons have to be learned over and over again.

• Many lessons learned are repeated across multiple
types of decommissioning and multiple countries. This
implies that lessons learned are not well embedded into
decommissioning activities.

Of course, this report spoke specifically to lessons learned
during decommissioning but may hold true to any other
type of lessons learned or best practice.

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