In the past year, there was a string of what the lab terms “abnormal events” involving the sealed compartments with attached gloves used to handle radioactive materials, with the frequency peaking in December when airborne toxins were released or workers had their skin contaminated almost every week.

Critics contend the growing number of incidents are tied to the lab pursuing yearly production of 30 nuclear warhead cores, or pits, which has made the facility more crowded and busy.

Nuclear security managers, military officials and some political leaders deem this a high-priority mission because they say the pits are needed to modernize the arsenal and equip at least two new warheads to deter nuclear adversaries like Russia and China.

But lab Director Thom Mason said managers at his request are reporting more incidents to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board than the lab did previously — including relatively minor mishaps they aren’t required by law to report.

“We’re working very hard with the defense board in terms of transparency and sharing information with them, making sure they’re aware,” Mason told The New Mexican in an interview last week. “I think there’s a lot more visibility, even around the very low-level things that aren’t really safety concerns in terms of the workers but are important for us to understand and track.”

Mason said he’s encouraging those under him to report all incidents so managers can learn from them and improve training and safety measures.

The workload in the facility, also known as PF-4, has gone up exponentially, while the number of safety incidents has shown a modest increase overall, Mason said.

At the same time, the number of serious incidents in which workers suffer a measurable dose of radiation has dropped over the years, he said.

Incidents involving glove boxes are becoming more common as workers disassemble and decontaminate the old compartments and install new equipment, he said, because the legacy models have lingering radioactive contaminants that can get released.

Another common incident is radioactive contaminants being released into a workroom when one of the attached gloves is punctured or torn while irradiated material is being handled, Mason said. Some gloves getting torn is inevitable, he added.

In most of those cases, minute contamination is detected on the workers’ skin, Mason said. A team decontaminates it on the spot, using a special wipe or a piece of tape to remove the radioactive particles, Mason said.

In rarer instances, the worker is sent to the clinic for an exam and treatment such as chelation therapy, he added.

The radioactivity in the work areas is mostly what’s known as alpha decay, with particles that cannot penetrate the skin, Mason said. It is important the worker doesn’t take in the contaminant through a cut or breathing because it can do significant harm internally, he said.

If the contaminant is removed from the skin, the worker receives no radioactive dose, Mason said.

A nuclear safety watchdog contends it’s difficult to know whether a worker inhaled a contaminant.

“How do they know the person didn’t get it inside?” said Dan Hirsch, retired director of environment and nuclear policy programs at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Hirsch said he doesn’t find it reassuring the lab had undisclosed safety lapses in the past and that the lab director thinks that somehow makes the current string of incidents less serious.

“If they now believe there’s a reason for this kind [of incident] to be reported, that means that a whole series of these similar ones from before weren’t getting reported,” Hirsch said.

The trouble is there are no available records to verify these unreported incidents and see how significant they really were, he added.

Hirsch argued expanded workload and staffing don’t make a given number of safety lapses any less serious.

Individual workers were put at risk because of miscues or flawed protections, and that’s what matters, he said. These lapses are happening as the lab prepares to escalate its plutonium operations to make pits, which will increase workers’ risks by “orders of magnitude,” he said.

“The issue should be preventing incidents,” Hirsch said.

Growing workforce increases challenges

Mason estimated the lab has had a net gain of 5,000 workers since 2018, increasing its total workforce to roughly 18,000 people. Of those, about 1,000 employees work at PF-4, which began operating on a 24-hour schedule about a year ago, Mason said.

A lab spokeswoman said data wasn’t immediately available on the number of safety incidents that have occurred per 100 employees and how that has changed over time.

Mason said he expects the hiring, including at PF-4, will level off in the next couple of years. The budget for plutonium operations and modernization already reflects that trend, with the lab receiving just a moderate bump this year for that purpose, from $1.6 billon in 2023 to $1.76 billion.

The spending on pit work is tapering after swelling almost fivefold in four years.

A big part of the the modernization is upgrading the fire-response systems and making the building, work areas and the glove boxes more seismically sound. All of that boosts worker safety, Mason said.

A recent seismic analysis deemed the plutonium facility, which stands amid a fault system on the Pajarito Plateau, able to withstand a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. The lab has spent roughly $100 million on seismic upgrades.

“If there’s an earthquake, head to PF-4,” Mason said, calling it the safest place in Northern New Mexico.

But another safety advocate said she finds it a worrisome trend that more worker-safety incidents are being reported.

Joni Arends, executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, said she wonders how long employees have been working at the lab and how much training they receive before entering a hazardous environment. “Are they seasoned employees or new employees?”

The lab seems to plow ahead with plutonium work, regardless of the number of incidents, Arends said.

“How many workers have to be exposed before it’s fixed?” she said. “At what point do they stop operations?”

Improving safety ahead of growth

Mason said the lab has had to operate on a similar track as the airline industry, improving safety faster than growth in production.

If airlines hadn’t made it safer to travel on jets when they went to commercial use, they would’ve had a plane crash every week and no one would want to fly in them, Mason said. And if the lab doesn’t keep its safety incidents down as it ramps up pit production, its federal overseers will shut it down.

A serious enough incident will lead to PF-4 suspending operations, Mason said, noting a decade ago the facility was closed for three years because of severe safety violations. Under his watch, work has been stopped for as long as two weeks to address problems.

“I think there’s this misperception that somehow there’s competing demands between production and safety,” Mason said. “If it’s not safe, we don’t produce.”

Hirsch, however, argued there is a conflict between the two.

In a facility where plutonium is handled this much, incidents are bound to occur that expose workers to radiation, Hirsch said. To say production is not prioritized over safety isn’t credible, he contended, because the nuclear mission couldn’t get accomplished otherwise.

“I haven’t seen a single [Department of Energy] facility where the pressures aren’t tremendously overweighted on the side of production compared to protecting worker health or the public,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch said it would be refreshing for the head of such a facility to acknowledge there are unsafe deficiencies, rather than trying to put a spin on them.

“One day I would like someone who’s in charge to walk in and take responsibility,” he said.

But Mason insists he does take safety seriously and that the lab is doing much better than before he took the reins, even with the push to manufacture pits.

Most of the incidents the public sees come from the safety board’s reports, he said, adding he welcomes the board’s oversight as the lab seeks to improve workers’ protections.

“It keeps us sharp, and I think it’s also important in reassuring the public that don’t just take our word for it, we’ve got people holding us to account,” Mason said.