7 ms·

Safety lapses hobble Los Alamos National Lab’s work on U.S. nuclear warheads

145 points by okket 9y ago

pcunite 9y ago
Getting people to believe in the dangers of things they can not touch, taste, see, or hear is often difficult.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  according to reports it's tasteable (metallic) and visible (blue light). The problem is just, when that happens it's too late.
- knz 9y ago
  Even if you can see/taste (air pollution) or hear (loud noises like gunshots or machinery) it people still actively resist measures to mitigate/prevent harm!
- Kenji 9y ago
  Works well enough with religion, though.
pdkl95 9y ago
> the staff had become “de-sensitized” to the risk of a serious accident. Yet again serious problems happen due to the Normalization Of Deviance. We really need to find a way to create working conditions that encourage correcting problematic situations immediately before the behavior becomes normalized. Regarding the management/other problems... I encourage everyone in ever industry that is ever involved with safety (i.e. most industries) to see Richard Cook's short talk about "Resilience in Complex Adaptive Systems"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
- cryptonector 9y ago
  I'm picturing workers who have never spent time on wikipedia reading about nuclear accidents, much less in any books. The list of nuclear accidents is hair-raising. The thought that a co-worker might assemble a near-critical mass nearby is... beyond hair-raising. Where the heck are they getting these guys, and what are they telling them?!
  - ncallaway 9y ago
    They are normal people, who follow normal psychological patterns. In your root cause analysis, 99% of the time the answer should not be "human error". An error that one human makes will be repeated in the future by another human. The problem is setting up patterns and processes in the working environment that are aware of these human limitations and that work around them. The air travel industry is a _great_ example of what happens when you don't simply blame the human, but look to fix the true problems that caused the human to make a mistake.
    - ythn 9y ago
      > The air travel industry is a _great_ example of what happens when you don't simply blame the human, but look to fix the true problems that caused the human to make a mistake. Contrast to my company: Our phones require you to dial "9" to get out of the building, and then "1" to dial long distance. A lot of my coworkers are foreign and in the process of trying to dial a cell phone number (international or otherwise) accidentally dial "911". When they realize their mistake, they hang up, not having grown up in America and learning to stay on the line and tell the operator that you made a mistake. Company response? Threatening emails, verbal and written company-wide wrist slaps, and stickers on every phone that say not to hang up if you dial 911 or you'll get in trouble. As a result people are now afraid of dialing long-distance numbers and so they simply avoid it. Imagine if the company had instead tried to correct the true issue causing the errors (poor phone routing numbers)?
      - ams6110 9y ago
        In many (all?) parts of the US, even if you stay on the line and tell the operator that the call was a mistake, you'll still get a visit from the police. The thinking is that someone who got a chance to dial 911 but then is discovered by a captor might be coerced into saying the call was a mistake. So they send the police to invesitigate ALL 911 calls -- hangups, mistakes, everything.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  This issue was covered in a NPR segment last year about an even older Harvard Business Review article. How to prevent the next oil rig disaster - solution - get the workers to admit vulnerability. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/482203447/invisibilia-how-learning-to-be-vulnerable-can-make-life-safer http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/48220344... https://hbr.org/2008/07/unmasking-manly-men https://hbr.org/2008/07/unmasking-manly-men
jessaustin 9y ago
Also relevant: https://apps.publicintegrity.org/nuclear-negligence/light-penalties/ https://apps.publicintegrity.org/nuclear-negligence/light-pe...
andyjohnson0 9y ago
"The resulting blue glow — known as Cherenkov radiation — has accidentally and abruptly flashed at least 60 times since the dawn of the nuclear age," I'm not a physicist, but as far as I know the blue flash generated by a criticality is caused by gases in the air fluorescing. Cherenkov radiation is a different phenomena. Edit: Seems to be confirmed by [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Blue_glow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Blue_glow
- arethuza 9y ago
  "Cherenkov radiation could also be responsible for the "blue flash" experienced in an excursion due to the intersection of particles with the vitreous humour within the eyeballs of those in the presence of the criticality." That's a pretty alarming idea!!
  - tjohns 9y ago
    It's actually a well known effect. Astronauts have reported seeing flashes of light when they close their eyes in space. It's believed to be caused by Cherenkov radiation from cosmic rays traveling through the vitreous humour of their eyes. Source: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v228/n5268/abs/228260a0.html https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v228/n5268/abs/228260a... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12678106 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12678106
andyjohnson0 9y ago
"they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table" The unpleasant death of Louis Slotin [1] is an example of the risks these people were taking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accid...
- liotier 9y ago
  Slotin's cautionary tale is such scary founding lore of the nuclear industry... Complacency born from habit is awfully powerful and that may be even scarier.
- rtkwe 9y ago
  The radiation dosage section of that article is a mess and I think shows a limitation of wikipedia. The writers managed to not use the same unit in any two consecutive sentences and sometimes not even with in the same sentence and don't bother providing any way to relate the different units.
  - bitJericho 9y ago
    So... fix it?
- NelsonMinar 9y ago
  Slotin's story is such a great example of complacency. "Using a screwdriver was not a normal part of the experimental protocol. ... the screwdriver slipped and the upper beryllium hemisphere fell, causing a prompt critical reaction and a burst of hard radiation."
- scott_s 9y ago
  It's also used as an example in the article.
pinewurst 9y ago
"Atomic Accidents" by James Mahaffey is an entire book of essentially criticality accidents. Well worth reading and entertaining in an often sick way.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser enumerates accidents related to nuclear weapons, many of which do not end in criticality due to sheer luck in most cases. Illusion of safety indeed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
  - programd 9y ago
    And also "A Review of Criticality Accidents", a short but action packed read referenced in the article. Nuclear materials are deadly in the most unexpected ways. https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf
    - pinewurst 9y ago
      That's a really good read too.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    I read that book differently. In nearly every case the payload didn't end in criticality because of the design of the weapon. Instead, there were ancillary effects from non-explosions.
    - cmiles74 9y ago
      That is true, although I was left with the impression that in many cases it was due to luck. Older weapons with poor safeguards ended up in service far longer than was reasonable and the addition of necessary safeguards was resisted at nearly every level. There were also many stories where a weapon was dropped during loading or caught in a fire, etc., and the general idea seemed to be that it could just have easily ended up in disaster. The story of the Damascus incident, which served as the framing story for the rest of the book, also seems relevant. In that case there were procedures to ensure safety but over time the reasons for these procedures seemed to have been forgotten or the knowledge inadequately passed on to newer team members. Old equipment (like HAZMAT suits) were allowed to get old, rendering them useless. Many people in the administration chain had weak or little knowledge of the facilities... And then there was an accident where a small mistake compounded into pretty scary incident.
sverige 9y ago
>PF-4 is also the only place where existing cores removed randomly from the arsenal can be painstakingly tested to see if they remain safe and reliable for use in the nuclear stockpile. That work has also been blocked, due to PF-4’s extended shutdown, according to internal DOE reports. I wonder if having another facility that can perform this work wouldn't provide the right incentive for the underperforming unit to improve. Competition is a healthy thing. Knowing that there is another lab that is doing the work to specifications should provide good motivation to improve.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  Competition in search for excellence is a dangerous tool, management implements a metric and the departments optimize for the metric no matter what the long-term goals are. This is how Sears became run into the ground: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys... Armed forces around the world rely on esprit de corps. The British SAS don't have to compete against Navy Seals to know they are the best, they know already.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Of course if something analagous to the SAS selection course was used for hiring at these labs, methinks you wouldn't see sloppy work either.
    - HarryHirsch 9y ago
      Also the training. In special forces each serviceman is trained beyond the immediate job duties. If the commander or anyone with special skills dies during a mission someone else must step up immediately to replace them and of course they all had the requisite training. You'd ask just how a nuke technician could even think of getting close to assembling a critical mass. Are they really that dumb? Have they never been told?
  - sverige 9y ago
    Yes, I guess that's what I'm getting at. And the SAS and SEALs are very aware of each other's existence, I'm sure, as well as that of the Russian Spetsnaz and similar forces.
nerdponx 9y ago
The investigation further revealed that the penalties imposed by the government on the private firms that make America’s nuclear weapons were typically just pinpricks, and that instead the firms annually were awarded large profits in the same years that major safety lapses occurred. Some were awarded new contracts despite repeated, avoidable accidents, including some that exposed workers to radiation. The author buried the lede.
- sbarre 9y ago
  Is this another situation where these are the only companies that can do the work, so the government has no choice but to work with them in order to stay on some kind of schedule? It must be pretty hard to disrupt the "government contracts for nuclear weapons production" industry..
  - abakker 9y ago
    >>It must be pretty hard to disrupt the "government contracts for nuclear weapons production" industry.. not to pick on you, but this is an interesting turn of phrase (I know it is sarcastic). There is an interesting gulf in SV culture nowadays between needing to "disrupt" an industry, and the industry actually just needing some renewed competition. A major problem is usually raising enough capital to really compete. And an interesting SV and banking assertion often made is that there is way too much capital chasing too few opportunities. I guess that raising relatively small VC funds precludes putting large sums of money to work, because that means no diversification. On the other hand, if we are done with low-hanging-app-fruit for outsized returns, is the solution just to raise bigger funds? It seems there are problems that can be profitably solved with modern software, modern teams, and new ideas, but which are not solved due to too much diversification of capital. edit: fixed autocorrect and word choice.
    - scottLobster 9y ago
      Pretty much. VCs didn't start SpaceX, Tesla and Blue Origin, billionaires did after already earning money through other means. Another issue that plays into diversification is the inherent riskiness of startups. Most will fail to create so much as a decent app while remaining on budget, who do you trust to create a reliable nuclear research lab? Even experts in the field might not have the requisite business experience, and if it fails it fails big time. You need someone like a Musk or Bezos to obsessively drive such an endeavor, and it's hard to pick out the future Musks and Bezoses if they haven't already proved themselves.
ianai 9y ago
Seems like the contractors over that facility should be removed? What does it take to lose a government contract?
- mrspeaker 9y ago
  Charge more.
- thrillgore 9y ago
  The current political talking point is that the private sector can do it cheaper. Which is exactly what you get with contractors: A mandate to pick the lowest bidder, and to not let it languish in RFP (by lobbying, typically). France has the right model with nuclear power creation and generation through a vertically-integrated state owned company, Areva. Our stockpile has to be an effective deterrent. We shouldn't trust contractors with our stockpiles, that process should be vertical too, damn the costs involved.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- davidmr 9y ago
  As a former DOE lab employee, I can't even begin to imagine the hassle of changing operating contracts, although LANL has really been putting forth extraordinary effort to get the DOE to try. What's most irritating is that the DOE use a broad brush and go overboard where it's easy and clearly don't do enough where it's hard. I had to attend ladder training before I was allowed to climb down under the 4' floor in my computer room and the rule was made that we had to use ladders all the time. You can't even fit the ladders in the tile holes, but the rule was on the books because it was "safe!". There were so many of those boneheaded rules, but these boneheads are allowed near plutonium to photograph it for no scientific purpose? Grrrrr
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    You go full union and work to code, refusing to do anything until they provide a suitable ladder.
ekianjo 9y ago
I think they misuse the word "critical" in the first paragraph. Surprising for Science.
- charonn0 9y ago
  Do you mean in the 2nd paragraph? I think they're using it correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass
droithomme 9y ago
I am very offended by the improper use of the term "accidental". Nothing described here was accidental at all. It was intentional. Insisting this is based on accidents, perhaps requiring endless more 'training', is counterproductive when the described acts were done with full awareness by qualified individuals who knew better. More training won't fix that. Therefore the solution of more training is doomed to fail. What should happen, in my opinion, is the University of California, and all contractors and corporations, and employees and workers, should be fired, banned from industry permanently, and the entire system replaced, because none of this, as the article points out, are isolated incidents, but rather are systematic and endemic problems.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dracodoc 9y ago
The report didn't tell the background about the private firms managing the lab, this is a much cleaner report: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201006/losalamos.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201006/losalamos.cf... Another related story https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/safety-lapses-undermine-nuclear-warhead-work-at-los-alamos/2017/06/17/87f051ee-510d-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/safet...
- ms013 9y ago
  It's been a pretty slow, sad unraveling of LANL (and to some degree the other two DP labs). The latest stories are pretty predictable given the transition from UC to LANS about a decade ago (I left the lab after the transition, since it was a morale mess - I really enjoyed my time there for about a decade before the change though). Things were already bad before that - the whole change of management from UC was in part due to a string of safety and security issues. Interestingly, I believe the issues that are currently being reported about have roots that trace all the way back to the last facility for doing that sort of work that got shut down up near Denver (Rocky Flats). The issues today are hardly new or novel - there has been some serious rotting going on within the NW complex since the Cold War began to wind down almost 30 years ago.
Pyxl101 9y ago
I wonder if anyone has considered building faux plutonium rods that can simulate criticality events. That is, they're packed with electronics and lights that display to you how much radiation they're giving off, and how close they are to going critical. They'd be electronic devices that measure each other's position. Accelerators could tell if they're dropped or banged on something. You'd also pair them with a faux radioactivity meter (Geiger counter), and perhaps a faux radiation dosage badge. "Huh, if I bang these rods on each other, I see a flash of lights showing it was 50% to critical, I hear the Geiger counter jack up, and my radiation badge measures that I've just instantly received a year's worth of radiation. Ouch." Maybe if technicians could experience first-hand how easy it is for these plutonium rods to go critical, they might be more wary of mishandling them. It's understandable how a person could become desensitized to the risk of something that they've never seen happen, where the threshold of that event occurring is not intuitively known. When I'm driving my car in a high performance way, I can feel when I'm beginning to push the bounds of its traction. I can feel when antilock breaking kicks in. I get to experience the threshold where something bad can begin to happen. With fissile material, perhaps it is a problem that workers never get to experience the threshold boundary at all until it's too late.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Without genuine selflessness, homeostasis or worse is inevitable. This is why in Japan you traditionally find the most enlightened Zen monks not teaching, but cooking or supervising the kitchen - because that's the prime point of safety vulnerability for a monastery.
FTA 9y ago
Another recent incident involving LANL and nuclear waste: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-.... Essentially, they used a chemically incompatible kitty litter in bins of nuclear waste (I read another article somewhere that went more in depth about how the decision to switch went down...unfortunately I can't find it quickly, but I recall it had something to do with a lack of clarity in communication). That bad reaction caused the bin to explode underground in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and release radioactivity. Shortly before this event, there was a truck that caught fire underground at the waste repository, shutting down operations. I think that event happening kept the amount of workers exposed in the bigger incident down. From my experience, safety in these sorts of situations is more of a burden than a lifestyle from a worker perspective. Holding individuals _and_ their superiors accountable--not only those that do not follow safety practices but also supervisors--I think is the only way safety will actually be fully practiced.
doggydogs94 9y ago
Most of these problems are what I call "paper safety" noncompliance (e.g. somebody not taking a refresher safety class on time). The problem will be solved by employees taking even more mind numbing safety training. You can also apply these principles to security violations.
chadcmulligan 9y ago
There's a few things abut training and so on here - but the problem is that plutonium rods should never be somewhere they are not meant to be imho. So to remove the risk when a rod is put somewhere it must be in a special stand that holds plutonium rods, the stand has little holes spaced the correct distance apart so criticality can't occur. The rule then is easier - plutonium rods will always be somewhere they should be. Also maybe paint them blue or something. Edit: upon thought if I was anywhere that had a rod laying on a table I'd get the hell out of there as soon as possible, cause it's just a recipe for disaster

145 points by okket 9y ago

pcunite 9y ago

Getting people to believe in the dangers of things they can not touch, taste, see, or hear is often difficult.

m_mueller 9y ago
according to reports it's tasteable (metallic) and visible (blue light). The problem is just, when that happens it's too late.
knz 9y ago
Even if you can see/taste (air pollution) or hear (loud noises like gunshots or machinery) it people still actively resist measures to mitigate/prevent harm!
Kenji 9y ago
Works well enough with religion, though.

pdkl95 9y ago

> the staff had become “de-sensitized” to the risk of a serious accident. Yet again serious problems happen due to the Normalization Of Deviance. We really need to find a way to create working conditions that encourage correcting problematic situations immediately before the behavior becomes normalized. Regarding the management/other problems... I encourage everyone in ever industry that is ever involved with safety (i.e. most industries) to see Richard Cook's short talk about "Resilience in Complex Adaptive Systems"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60

cryptonector 9y ago
I'm picturing workers who have never spent time on wikipedia reading about nuclear accidents, much less in any books. The list of nuclear accidents is hair-raising. The thought that a co-worker might assemble a near-critical mass nearby is... beyond hair-raising. Where the heck are they getting these guys, and what are they telling them?!
- ncallaway 9y ago
  They are normal people, who follow normal psychological patterns. In your root cause analysis, 99% of the time the answer should not be "human error". An error that one human makes will be repeated in the future by another human. The problem is setting up patterns and processes in the working environment that are aware of these human limitations and that work around them. The air travel industry is a _great_ example of what happens when you don't simply blame the human, but look to fix the true problems that caused the human to make a mistake.
  - ythn 9y ago
    > The air travel industry is a _great_ example of what happens when you don't simply blame the human, but look to fix the true problems that caused the human to make a mistake. Contrast to my company: Our phones require you to dial "9" to get out of the building, and then "1" to dial long distance. A lot of my coworkers are foreign and in the process of trying to dial a cell phone number (international or otherwise) accidentally dial "911". When they realize their mistake, they hang up, not having grown up in America and learning to stay on the line and tell the operator that you made a mistake. Company response? Threatening emails, verbal and written company-wide wrist slaps, and stickers on every phone that say not to hang up if you dial 911 or you'll get in trouble. As a result people are now afraid of dialing long-distance numbers and so they simply avoid it. Imagine if the company had instead tried to correct the true issue causing the errors (poor phone routing numbers)?
    - ams6110 9y ago
      In many (all?) parts of the US, even if you stay on the line and tell the operator that the call was a mistake, you'll still get a visit from the police. The thinking is that someone who got a chance to dial 911 but then is discovered by a captor might be coerced into saying the call was a mistake. So they send the police to invesitigate ALL 911 calls -- hangups, mistakes, everything.
stevenwoo 9y ago
This issue was covered in a NPR segment last year about an even older Harvard Business Review article. How to prevent the next oil rig disaster - solution - get the workers to admit vulnerability. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/482203447/invisibilia-how-learning-to-be-vulnerable-can-make-life-safer http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/48220344... https://hbr.org/2008/07/unmasking-manly-men https://hbr.org/2008/07/unmasking-manly-men

jessaustin 9y ago

Also relevant: https://apps.publicintegrity.org/nuclear-negligence/light-penalties/ https://apps.publicintegrity.org/nuclear-negligence/light-pe...

andyjohnson0 9y ago

"The resulting blue glow — known as Cherenkov radiation — has accidentally and abruptly flashed at least 60 times since the dawn of the nuclear age," I'm not a physicist, but as far as I know the blue flash generated by a criticality is caused by gases in the air fluorescing. Cherenkov radiation is a different phenomena. Edit: Seems to be confirmed by [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Blue_glow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Blue_glow

arethuza 9y ago
"Cherenkov radiation could also be responsible for the "blue flash" experienced in an excursion due to the intersection of particles with the vitreous humour within the eyeballs of those in the presence of the criticality." That's a pretty alarming idea!!
- tjohns 9y ago
  It's actually a well known effect. Astronauts have reported seeing flashes of light when they close their eyes in space. It's believed to be caused by Cherenkov radiation from cosmic rays traveling through the vitreous humour of their eyes. Source: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v228/n5268/abs/228260a0.html https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v228/n5268/abs/228260a... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12678106 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12678106

andyjohnson0 9y ago

"they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table" The unpleasant death of Louis Slotin [1] is an example of the risks these people were taking. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accid...

liotier 9y ago
Slotin's cautionary tale is such scary founding lore of the nuclear industry... Complacency born from habit is awfully powerful and that may be even scarier.
rtkwe 9y ago
The radiation dosage section of that article is a mess and I think shows a limitation of wikipedia. The writers managed to not use the same unit in any two consecutive sentences and sometimes not even with in the same sentence and don't bother providing any way to relate the different units.
- bitJericho 9y ago
  So... fix it?
NelsonMinar 9y ago
Slotin's story is such a great example of complacency. "Using a screwdriver was not a normal part of the experimental protocol. ... the screwdriver slipped and the upper beryllium hemisphere fell, causing a prompt critical reaction and a burst of hard radiation."
scott_s 9y ago
It's also used as an example in the article.

pinewurst 9y ago

"Atomic Accidents" by James Mahaffey is an entire book of essentially criticality accidents. Well worth reading and entertaining in an often sick way.

cmiles74 9y ago
"Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser enumerates accidents related to nuclear weapons, many of which do not end in criticality due to sheer luck in most cases. Illusion of safety indeed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
- programd 9y ago
  And also "A Review of Criticality Accidents", a short but action packed read referenced in the article. Nuclear materials are deadly in the most unexpected ways. https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf
  - pinewurst 9y ago
    That's a really good read too.
- dekhn 9y ago
  I read that book differently. In nearly every case the payload didn't end in criticality because of the design of the weapon. Instead, there were ancillary effects from non-explosions.
  - cmiles74 9y ago
    That is true, although I was left with the impression that in many cases it was due to luck. Older weapons with poor safeguards ended up in service far longer than was reasonable and the addition of necessary safeguards was resisted at nearly every level. There were also many stories where a weapon was dropped during loading or caught in a fire, etc., and the general idea seemed to be that it could just have easily ended up in disaster. The story of the Damascus incident, which served as the framing story for the rest of the book, also seems relevant. In that case there were procedures to ensure safety but over time the reasons for these procedures seemed to have been forgotten or the knowledge inadequately passed on to newer team members. Old equipment (like HAZMAT suits) were allowed to get old, rendering them useless. Many people in the administration chain had weak or little knowledge of the facilities... And then there was an accident where a small mistake compounded into pretty scary incident.

sverige 9y ago

>PF-4 is also the only place where existing cores removed randomly from the arsenal can be painstakingly tested to see if they remain safe and reliable for use in the nuclear stockpile. That work has also been blocked, due to PF-4’s extended shutdown, according to internal DOE reports. I wonder if having another facility that can perform this work wouldn't provide the right incentive for the underperforming unit to improve. Competition is a healthy thing. Knowing that there is another lab that is doing the work to specifications should provide good motivation to improve.

HarryHirsch 9y ago
Competition in search for excellence is a dangerous tool, management implements a metric and the departments optimize for the metric no matter what the long-term goals are. This is how Sears became run into the ground: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys... Armed forces around the world rely on esprit de corps. The British SAS don't have to compete against Navy Seals to know they are the best, they know already.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Of course if something analagous to the SAS selection course was used for hiring at these labs, methinks you wouldn't see sloppy work either.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    Also the training. In special forces each serviceman is trained beyond the immediate job duties. If the commander or anyone with special skills dies during a mission someone else must step up immediately to replace them and of course they all had the requisite training. You'd ask just how a nuke technician could even think of getting close to assembling a critical mass. Are they really that dumb? Have they never been told?
- sverige 9y ago
  Yes, I guess that's what I'm getting at. And the SAS and SEALs are very aware of each other's existence, I'm sure, as well as that of the Russian Spetsnaz and similar forces.

nerdponx 9y ago

The investigation further revealed that the penalties imposed by the government on the private firms that make America’s nuclear weapons were typically just pinpricks, and that instead the firms annually were awarded large profits in the same years that major safety lapses occurred. Some were awarded new contracts despite repeated, avoidable accidents, including some that exposed workers to radiation. The author buried the lede.

sbarre 9y ago
Is this another situation where these are the only companies that can do the work, so the government has no choice but to work with them in order to stay on some kind of schedule? It must be pretty hard to disrupt the "government contracts for nuclear weapons production" industry..
- abakker 9y ago
  >>It must be pretty hard to disrupt the "government contracts for nuclear weapons production" industry.. not to pick on you, but this is an interesting turn of phrase (I know it is sarcastic). There is an interesting gulf in SV culture nowadays between needing to "disrupt" an industry, and the industry actually just needing some renewed competition. A major problem is usually raising enough capital to really compete. And an interesting SV and banking assertion often made is that there is way too much capital chasing too few opportunities. I guess that raising relatively small VC funds precludes putting large sums of money to work, because that means no diversification. On the other hand, if we are done with low-hanging-app-fruit for outsized returns, is the solution just to raise bigger funds? It seems there are problems that can be profitably solved with modern software, modern teams, and new ideas, but which are not solved due to too much diversification of capital. edit: fixed autocorrect and word choice.
  - scottLobster 9y ago
    Pretty much. VCs didn't start SpaceX, Tesla and Blue Origin, billionaires did after already earning money through other means. Another issue that plays into diversification is the inherent riskiness of startups. Most will fail to create so much as a decent app while remaining on budget, who do you trust to create a reliable nuclear research lab? Even experts in the field might not have the requisite business experience, and if it fails it fails big time. You need someone like a Musk or Bezos to obsessively drive such an endeavor, and it's hard to pick out the future Musks and Bezoses if they haven't already proved themselves.

ianai 9y ago

Seems like the contractors over that facility should be removed? What does it take to lose a government contract?

mrspeaker 9y ago
Charge more.
thrillgore 9y ago
The current political talking point is that the private sector can do it cheaper. Which is exactly what you get with contractors: A mandate to pick the lowest bidder, and to not let it languish in RFP (by lobbying, typically). France has the right model with nuclear power creation and generation through a vertically-integrated state owned company, Areva. Our stockpile has to be an effective deterrent. We shouldn't trust contractors with our stockpiles, that process should be vertical too, damn the costs involved.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
davidmr 9y ago
As a former DOE lab employee, I can't even begin to imagine the hassle of changing operating contracts, although LANL has really been putting forth extraordinary effort to get the DOE to try. What's most irritating is that the DOE use a broad brush and go overboard where it's easy and clearly don't do enough where it's hard. I had to attend ladder training before I was allowed to climb down under the 4' floor in my computer room and the rule was made that we had to use ladders all the time. You can't even fit the ladders in the tile holes, but the rule was on the books because it was "safe!". There were so many of those boneheaded rules, but these boneheads are allowed near plutonium to photograph it for no scientific purpose? Grrrrr
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  You go full union and work to code, refusing to do anything until they provide a suitable ladder.

ekianjo 9y ago

I think they misuse the word "critical" in the first paragraph. Surprising for Science.

charonn0 9y ago
Do you mean in the 2nd paragraph? I think they're using it correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass

droithomme 9y ago

I am very offended by the improper use of the term "accidental". Nothing described here was accidental at all. It was intentional. Insisting this is based on accidents, perhaps requiring endless more 'training', is counterproductive when the described acts were done with full awareness by qualified individuals who knew better. More training won't fix that. Therefore the solution of more training is doomed to fail. What should happen, in my opinion, is the University of California, and all contractors and corporations, and employees and workers, should be fired, banned from industry permanently, and the entire system replaced, because none of this, as the article points out, are isolated incidents, but rather are systematic and endemic problems.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dracodoc 9y ago

The report didn't tell the background about the private firms managing the lab, this is a much cleaner report: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201006/losalamos.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201006/losalamos.cf... Another related story https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/safety-lapses-undermine-nuclear-warhead-work-at-los-alamos/2017/06/17/87f051ee-510d-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/safet...

ms013 9y ago
It's been a pretty slow, sad unraveling of LANL (and to some degree the other two DP labs). The latest stories are pretty predictable given the transition from UC to LANS about a decade ago (I left the lab after the transition, since it was a morale mess - I really enjoyed my time there for about a decade before the change though). Things were already bad before that - the whole change of management from UC was in part due to a string of safety and security issues. Interestingly, I believe the issues that are currently being reported about have roots that trace all the way back to the last facility for doing that sort of work that got shut down up near Denver (Rocky Flats). The issues today are hardly new or novel - there has been some serious rotting going on within the NW complex since the Cold War began to wind down almost 30 years ago.

Pyxl101 9y ago

I wonder if anyone has considered building faux plutonium rods that can simulate criticality events. That is, they're packed with electronics and lights that display to you how much radiation they're giving off, and how close they are to going critical. They'd be electronic devices that measure each other's position. Accelerators could tell if they're dropped or banged on something. You'd also pair them with a faux radioactivity meter (Geiger counter), and perhaps a faux radiation dosage badge. "Huh, if I bang these rods on each other, I see a flash of lights showing it was 50% to critical, I hear the Geiger counter jack up, and my radiation badge measures that I've just instantly received a year's worth of radiation. Ouch." Maybe if technicians could experience first-hand how easy it is for these plutonium rods to go critical, they might be more wary of mishandling them. It's understandable how a person could become desensitized to the risk of something that they've never seen happen, where the threshold of that event occurring is not intuitively known. When I'm driving my car in a high performance way, I can feel when I'm beginning to push the bounds of its traction. I can feel when antilock breaking kicks in. I get to experience the threshold where something bad can begin to happen. With fissile material, perhaps it is a problem that workers never get to experience the threshold boundary at all until it's too late.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Without genuine selflessness, homeostasis or worse is inevitable. This is why in Japan you traditionally find the most enlightened Zen monks not teaching, but cooking or supervising the kitchen - because that's the prime point of safety vulnerability for a monastery.

FTA 9y ago

Another recent incident involving LANL and nuclear waste: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-.... Essentially, they used a chemically incompatible kitty litter in bins of nuclear waste (I read another article somewhere that went more in depth about how the decision to switch went down...unfortunately I can't find it quickly, but I recall it had something to do with a lack of clarity in communication). That bad reaction caused the bin to explode underground in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and release radioactivity. Shortly before this event, there was a truck that caught fire underground at the waste repository, shutting down operations. I think that event happening kept the amount of workers exposed in the bigger incident down. From my experience, safety in these sorts of situations is more of a burden than a lifestyle from a worker perspective. Holding individuals _and_ their superiors accountable--not only those that do not follow safety practices but also supervisors--I think is the only way safety will actually be fully practiced.

doggydogs94 9y ago

Most of these problems are what I call "paper safety" noncompliance (e.g. somebody not taking a refresher safety class on time). The problem will be solved by employees taking even more mind numbing safety training. You can also apply these principles to security violations.

chadcmulligan 9y ago

There's a few things abut training and so on here - but the problem is that plutonium rods should never be somewhere they are not meant to be imho. So to remove the risk when a rod is put somewhere it must be in a special stand that holds plutonium rods, the stand has little holes spaced the correct distance apart so criticality can't occur. The rule then is easier - plutonium rods will always be somewhere they should be. Also maybe paint them blue or something. Edit: upon thought if I was anywhere that had a rod laying on a table I'd get the hell out of there as soon as possible, cause it's just a recipe for disaster