Some LANL plutonium stored in vulnerable containers

• By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com
• December 22, 2021

(Greg Mello published comment)

Los Alamos National Laboratory wants to store high heat-emitting plutonium in uncertified containers that, if breached in a fire or an earthquake, could expose workers and the public to hazardous doses of radiation, according to a government watchdog’s report.

The lab’s primary contractor seeks a waiver to store large quantities of plutonium-238 in unapproved containers that, if breached, could expose the public to 83 to 378 rem, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a December report, referring to the unit that measures radiation absorbed in living tissue.

The potential radiation release is not clear because the plutonium would be in containers not specifically designed to hold it, making it unknown how much might leak out, the report said, indicating it’s likely to far exceed the 25-rem threshold that requires a risk analysis.

Even 25 rem is deemed a high dose that can cause death or serious injury from significant radiological exposure, according to the U.S. Energy Department’s guidelines for assessing the risks.

Plutonium-238’s relatively swift decay emits steady heat that can be converted to electricity, making it suitable for power systems on some satellites and NASA spacecraft, including the Mars rovers. It’s not the weapons-grade plutonium the lab uses to produce nuclear warhead triggers known as pits.

Triad National Security LLC, which operates the lab, will submit a risk analysis to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s field office to review.

“Triad is requesting that NNSA accept the risk involved with performing this mission,” the report states.

Lab spokesman Peter Hyde wrote in an email that the analysis will involve looking at a wide range of possible accident scenarios, including from fire and seismic events, and radiation doses that might be released.

“Protections are developed to minimize the possible impact to public health and safety,” Hyde wrote. “Engineering processes and procedures are developed and implemented to mitigate such accidents.”

Teams also will analyze how to reduce the risks of shipping, handling and packaging the plutonium.

The shipments the lab is set to receive would exceed the normal space limits of its plutonium facility’s first floor and its glove boxes, the report said, referring to the sealed compartments that workers use to handle radioactive materials.

Hyde played down the hazards.

Although uncertified, the containers that hold the plutonium are deemed safe and would be shipped inside a certified outer container that meets “robust safety standards,” he wrote.

After the plutonium arrived at the lab, it would be transferred to certified containers for storage, he wrote, although he didn’t state when the change would happen.

Critics accused the lab of posing unnecessary risks to workers and the public.

“They’ve identified another safety hazard at Los Alamos regarding containers that may not be able to keep the material from getting released, and they’re estimating doses that are astronomical,” said Dan Hirsch, retired director of environment and nuclear policy programs at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Just 25 rem is 12,500 X-rays and a very, very high cancer risk,” Hirsch added. “That they’re so far over it is astonishing.”

The Energy Department’s safety guidelines show the potential releases could be devastating, and yet the lab’s operator is asking for a pass, Hirsch said.

Plutonium-238 has a much shorter half-life — about 90 years — than weapons-grade plutonium’s 24,100 years. That actually makes the toxicity much more acute because it’s decaying so rapidly, Hirsch said.

An anti-nuclear group said this type of plutonium isn’t explosive but would be hazardous to breathe.

It’s possible the lab made this type of plutonium a lesser priority while ramping up pit production, and now it plans to take big shipments, said Scott Kovac, research and operations director for the nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico.

“That’s a huge amount to accept,” Kovac said. “Now they’re asking NNSA to say that’s OK.”

Greg Mello, published comment:

Thank you for writing about this. Dan and Scott are appropriately aghast. What's missing is any kind of overview. Scott's speculations are correct: the safety of Pu-238 operations, and with them the safety of PF-4 as a whole, are being compromised for the sake of pit production. The New Mexican's "hit and run" journalism does not however inform the public in any meaningful way. Context is entirely lacking. Fixing that would require editorial and management commitment to unveiling, well, enough truth for the community to have a basic idea of what is going on. That hasn't happened. Reporters can't do a good job when management interest is lacking, as it seems to be for some years now. Basically the New Mexican is afraid of offending LANL -- or perhaps the senators or the Governor. From the senators to the Governor to the New Mexican to the Albuquerque Journal, growth is the prime directive, even if it is growth in weapons of mass destruction involving processing more and more tons of some of the most dangerous materials known to humanity. It's an old story, as old as Jacob and Esau.

Safety of plutonium operations is being challenged in multiple ways, which LANL and NNSA freely admit in more private settings. The problem is created by a legacy culture that lacked adequate safety, which created a legacy infrastructure that lacks adequate safety, now impacted by a crash program (the largest program in NNSA bar none) to remodel and retool with construction workers and additional security guards while also running production and various other "hot" operations which cannot be paused, with a generational "changing of the guard" underway in a rapidly-growing plutonium workforce and relatively junior and in some cases poorly-trained new staff with little on-the-job-training, with all this work proceeding day and night in an old, relatively cramped facility that was designed for other purposes. What could go wrong?
Pit production at LANL is just bad planning and engineering, full stop, before even getting to the lack of technical need and negative arms control aspects of it.

Unfortunately Nuclear Watch has advocated for pit production at LANL since 2003 (though only seldom revealing this in New Mexico), which makes it politically possible for national arms control and other groups to line up behind the New Mexico Democrats to do the same. We hope Scott and Nuclear Watch will finally join us in opposing this mission.