Feds find deficiencies in beryllium controls at Los Alamos

By Mark Oswald / Journal Staff Writer
Friday, February 23rd, 2018 at 2:15pm

SANTA FE – Federal inspectors say that Los Alamos National Laboratory has failed to do enough to ensure employees aren’t exposed to beryllium, used at Los Alamos since 1943 and historically a source of illness among workers in the nation’s weapons complex.

A new report by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector found problems with the accuracy of LANL’s beryllium inventory and the repurposing of former beryllium sites “without a formal evaluation to ensure that any residual contamination was within the acceptable threshold for release.”

Because of substandard testing and sampling, “Los Alamos could not provide statistically significant assurance that residual beryllium contamination did not exceed the acceptable limit.”

“There may have been an increased risk that workers were inappropriately exposed,” says the report.

Beryllium is a light metal used in materials research, defense systems and testing at LANL. In powdered form and airborne, it can be highly toxic and cause chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating and sometimes fatal lung ailment.

About 20 years ago, beryllium exposure was among the health problems the federal government belatedly acknowledged among U.S. weapons workers. It began offering compensation and set up a formal Chronic Beryllium Disease Prevention Program for DOE sites.

In a 2009 incident, LANL notified about 2,000 then-current and former employees and visitors who may have been exposed after a damaged box containing beryllium was received at the lab’s short-term storage facility.

The new report states that from 2009 to 2015, several reviews cited concerns with the beryllium inventory and hazard assessment at LANL. The Office of Inspector General decided to do its own inspection due to “the significant risk to the work force of beryllium exposure” and found “Los Alamos did not fully implement an effective Prevention Program.”

It says that in 2016, LANL reduced or eliminated many beryllium controls without the OK of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office.

The lab went back to the approved rules after inspectors met with LANL officials in October 2016, but because of prior failures to update beryllium inventory forms, “Los Alamos’ inventory challenges remain unresolved,” the report states.

Asked for comment, LANL spokesman Matt Nerzig said: “Nothing is more important than the safety and health of our workforce and the public. We are committed to the improvement of our beryllium program at Los Alamos National Laboratory and are addressing the recommendations outlined in the Inspector General’s report.”

“Los Alamos did not reduce or eliminate operational controls that would have adversely affected worker exposure, but we remain focused on ensuring continued improvement in our administrative and record keeping processes.”

The report says that among 512 locations of beryllium operations or containers documented at LANL in 2016, several inaccuracies were found, including three locations listed as being former storage sites for beryllium although they were still being used for that purpose. Only 45 percent of the sites had completed hazard assessments describing where the beryllium was and what operations it was used for.

NNSA and Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private consortium including the University of California and Bechtel that runs the lab, concurred with the findings and agreed to take corrective action.

Lab critics commented on the new report. “This is one of those issues that recurs on a decadal basis,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group. “And makes some of us furious.”

“This is just more evidence of the historic pattern of how LANL and the nation-wide nuclear weapons complex have always valued  production above the safety of its workers, ” said Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.