Watchdog groups are very concerned about the safety record of the aging nuclear weapons plant at Los Alamos, New Mexico. After all, it was where the atomic bomb was created almost 75 years ago. Criticism over the lab’s safety has increased as the facility ramps up production of highly radioactive plutonium pits.
In a series published by the Center for Public Integrity, many internal reports, and other documents are cited showing federal regulators concerns over safety lapses that have taken place over the years at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory (LANL), including the spilling of plutonium and the positioning of plutonium rods that could have led to a disaster.
The “Near-miss” in August 2011
Patrick Malone, with the Center for Public Integrity, published a very scary story in New Mexico Politics on June 18 about a near-disaster that occurred at LANL in August 2011. A group of technicians, looking for a way to impress their bosses, gathered eight plutonium rods and very carefully lined them up, side-by-side so they could be photographed to show how nice they looked.
Believe it or not, this actually happened, folks. Most of us know that plutonium is unstable, radioactive, and it is really not suitable for showing off that way to anyone, let alone your bosses. The reason is simple – too much plutonium put in one place has a tendency to become “critical.” with fission building to an uncontrollable point that sparks a spontaneous nuclear reaction.
Malone writes that the resulting blue glow — “known as Cherenkov radiation – has accidentally and abruptly flashed at least 60 times since the dawn of the nuclear age, signaling an instantaneous nuclear charge and causing a total of 21 agonizing deaths.” And this is the reason for one rule that is written in stone when dealing with nuclear materials – Keep bits of plutonium far apart from each other.
As it turns out, a supervisor returning from lunch noticed the array of plutonium rods and ordered a technician to move them apart. However, she also violated safety rules that called for an evacuation of the facility because of the “criticality” of the incident. A more senior supervisor improperly told employees to keep working, according to an Energy Department report describing the incident.
This is what is really disturbing about the 2011 event – It wasn’t made public and even worse, almost all the Los Alamos engineers tasked with keeping workers safe from criticality events quit because of the sloppy way the 2011 event was handled internally, accusing the facility of putting its own profits above worker safety.
An event such as what happened in 2011 not only risks employees within the facility but residents in communities surrounding the nuclear laboratory.
Other safety concerns at LANL
Despite any number of safety concerns and discrepancies that have been uncovered, the Associated Press is reporting that in an internal memo they obtained, the Los Alamos facility is firing back at critics and reassuring employees that the lab is a safe place to work.
“As employees, you should be proud of your laboratory’s accomplishments over the past decade to strengthen our ability to operate safely and securely,” according to the memo, dated Monday. “While there will often be external organizations and individuals which advance a misleading narrative, it is not an accurate reflection of our work.”
But really, safety at the aging nuclear weapons plant should be a top priority, always. At the Nuclear Board meeting earlier this month, members learned that many of the alarm and fire suppression systems at the plutonium facility date to the 1970s, yet the Energy Department wants the lab to increase production of the plutonium pits to as many as 50 to 80 a year.
The company managing the lab is losing its contract next year in part because of the history of safety lapses, Sen. Tom Udall’s office said Tuesday. A spokesperson for Udall said the senator sees the contracting process as a means to make improvements in the facility.
Actually, the nation’s nuclear facilities are all getting old and decrepit. Aside from Los Alamos, inadequate funding and the inability to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state has become so bad that experts fear there will likely be another nuclear accident in the near future.
Patrick Malone is an investigative reporter who has spent well over a year documenting the safety record at LANL. Perhaps it is time that Congressional oversight committees take a closer look at what is happening in the nation’s nuclear laboratory before something disastrous happens.
