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LANL's improperly stored nuclear safes raise larger concerns
Los Alamos National Laboratory workers left items atop nuclear-material safes, raising questions about why personnel weren’t properly trained and whether such lapses reflect the plutonium facility is getting busier as it’s rebuilt to produce nuclear bomb cores, according to an independent safety board report. Many safes require six inches of space around them, yet there have been several recent instances in which items were discovered on the safes. That prompted managers to add “operator aids” to safes to help workers identify which ones must remain clear, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s latest report. On Oct. 6, inspectors found items placed on several safes and a welding curtain propped up against another, the board’s report said. “Facility personnel are working on methods to prevent these occurrences,” the report said. “This is a challenge given the rapid increase of staffing in the facility.” It’s especially problematic with construction workers and tradespeople who are not trained on these “criticality safety” postings the way nuclear-material handlers are, the report said. Criticality is the point at which a nuclear reaction is self-sustaining, which can trigger an explosion. The lab declined to respond to questions about the safety board’s findings on the safes. Critics say these kinds of lapses come with mixing workers doing daily operations at the facility with construction crews not trained to work in a nuclear environment — and managers trying to coordinate the chaotic ensemble. “They have new workers being trained, construction workers on the site, schedule pressures [and] they frequently work at night,” said Greg Mello, executive director of the nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group. “Everything is very crowded. You add it all up together, and it’s not a good situation for safety.” The number of workers — and potential for additional problems — is likely to increase as the lab moves closer to making plutonium pits used to detonate warheads, Mello said. Cramming in so many people could push the building beyond its capacity, he added. Federal officials want the lab to produce 30 of the softball-sized pits a year by 2026. They also hope to have Savannah River Site in South Carolina manufacture an additional 50 pits yearly in the 2030s. “Los Alamos is rapidly ramping up, and doing a lot of new hires,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The lab has a record of worker safety problems, including at its plutonium facility, so expanding on-site workers there will exacerbate an already unsafe situation, Coghlan said. Mello said overhauling a facility built in the late 1970s to comply with modern safety and fire codes and meet the demands of the upcoming pit production is an extensive, complex project. It seems inevitable that construction tasks will collide with plutonium operations, he said. “It has so many different, moving parts, and they all have to work together in the right order,” Mello said. “And it’s very complicated.” According to the report, in areas required to remain clear, crews will paint “no storage zones” on the floor and rope them off. Longer term, managers plan to assess controls, such as installing a physical cage around safes and train workers who don’t normally deal with nuclear materials, the safety board added. |
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