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Organic Cat Litter Chief Suspect In Nuclear Waste Accident
- CapitalistCartr 12y agoPeople laugh at the extreme detail the military uses to specify such item. I spent six years in USAF and I've groaned at some of it. But we damn sure never had this happen under SAC. And we were building nukes. Details matter.
- timr 12y agoThe SAC had plenty of nasty screw ups, including littering large areas of Spain and (iirc) Greenland with plutonium dust from nuclear weapons accidents. It's also pretty much dumb luck that we've never had an accidental detonation of an SAC-controlled nuclear weapon: http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-ebook/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-ebook/d...
- sc68cal 12y agoHere's some more information about the plutonium dust in Spain - there was a mid-air collision between a KC tanker and a B-52 which was carrying nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
- gambiting 12y agoI very strongly recommend that book to anyone who hasn't read it yet - fascinating stuff.
- CapitalistCartr 12y agoYeah, we had amazing accodents until they finally decided to stop flying them drop-ready. Bombing Franco's farmers was a major impetus towards that. But the lack of accidental detonation was not luck; they were crazy overbuilt.
- timr 12y agoIf you read the book, you might change your mind about that. It spends a lot of time documenting some really basic deficiencies -- bombs that could detonate if overheated or struck by a single projectile, for example. A large number of weapons were made with high explosives that weren't thermostable. Others could detonate if dropped from a few feet. There were many deployed ballistic missiles that were susceptible to lightning strikes. The arming switches in SAC aircraft were, for years, simple open-loop circuits that had a high probability of short-circuiting in an accident. In fact, most of the book is about the attempts of the weapons labs to make the arsenal safer. Most of those attempts were rebuffed by the military. The SAC's strict policies definitely helped to prevent disaster, but if you read about some of the incidents, it's clear that there was a lot of stupid luck involved, too.
- Retric 12y agoMost of those would probably cause a non nuclear detonation. Still bad, but no where near as dangerous.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Lagged2Death 12y agoThe author deals with this line of reasoning and finds it wanting.
- JackFr 12y agoTake my comment with a grain of salt, as I have not read the book, but there is no story if there is no danger. If the author concluded that there was no nuclear danger, its likely the book has little more than academic interest, and doesn't get published. You can both be correct and want to sell books but commercial considerations can also direct rhetoric.
- deleted 12y ago
- facepalm 12y agoThat's nice, but they will make mistakes anyway. As an example look at exploding NASA space rockets (I suppose NASA is not military, but it's an example where they also used a meticulous process and still failed).
- tedsanders 12y agoI once talked to a scientist who worked on cat litter for a major corporation. It was surprisingly interesting to hear about the chemistry and geology and supply chain management of such a mundane substance. I guess the DOE scientists running this project were not aware of these subtle issues of chemistry and geology.
- tragicAndCruel 12y agoIsn't organic cat litter made from corn?
- tedsanders 12y agoThey were in the business of manufacturing non-organic cat litter, the kind made from a special type of clay.
- keenerd 12y agoThe clay is not that special, it is called bentonite. You can order it by the pallet load, and it is a whole lot cheaper than cat litter. I'm surprised that the spec did not call for bentonite directly, and that no one in these comments has mentioned it either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite
- sp332 12y ago"How come nobody caught this and raised a red flag?" asks It looks like they caught it to me.
- jqm 12y agoI think this is still speculative though. From what I understand from local papers it is also believed a piece of salt fell from the ceiling (waste is housed in an old salt mine).
- timr 12y agoThat's old information. This story is the current theory.
- jqm 12y agoOh. Do they have any evidence against the salt fall theory? My understanding is that no one has been back down the hole since the event.
- timr 12y agoThey've been inside the room that had the leak, and they have video of the ruptured drum. There were no problems with the mine walls, and the evidence suggests the damage was heat-related: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html
- jqm 12y agoYou are much more up to date than I am. Thanks for the cool link. Interesting read.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWhy the hell they are writing a spec with a commercial product name rather than the material contained in it is beyond me. If the contractor knew they were looking for a certain kind of clay rather than cat litter, this would be nearly impossible.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gohrt 12y agoThe problem seems to be that they didn't know exactly what they looking for, or how to describe the set of acceptable clay-like substances. This is an physical-science example of the "justification problem" -- chemistry isn't computer science, we don't design all out components from the elemental level; we discover and hack molecules, and identify them by interpreting their behaviors (boiling point, what color smoke is produced when mixed with some other stuff, etc) , and then we slap on a label that we hope is correct). It's all a very statistical science, not irrefutable logic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument
- lotsofmangos 12y agohow to describe the set of acceptable clay-like substances. Given the context, I would have hoped something involving a mass spectrometer or something similar rather than buying something purely on the basis that it is known to have the property of being suitable for cats to urinate into and then hoping that they don't ever change the mixture on any products in the range.
- timr 12y agoI bet the thinking was something along the lines of "kitty litter is an inert absorptive material", and nobody really thought much about the differences between types of kitty litter, and whether or not they were truly inert.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
- mikeryan 12y agoGod I read that title wrong. I read it as "Organic Cat Litter Chief" - "Suspect in Nuclear Waste Accident" As opposed to "Organic Cat Litter" - "Chief Suspect in Nuclear Waste Accident" I kept wondering when the CEO of a Cat Litter company was going to be blamed for something.
- drdeadringer 12y ago> Organic Cat Litter Chief A new Tzar appointment by the President.
- phkahler 12y agoIt's not you, that's how I read it.
- Stratoscope 12y ago"I misread X as Y" comments don't seem to be popular here, but I was tempted to post the same thing. I read this headline exactly the same way as you, and I actually felt relieved to know that the cat litter CEO was not a suspect in this accident! I think it's a lesson for headline writers: Sure, write your headline as terse and tight as you can make it. But at least re-read it a few times to make sure it isn't ambiguous. Another way to put it: "What would Experts Exchange think of this headline?"
- GnarfGnarf 12y agoThat's exactly how I read it the first time, too.
- quasque 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence (I also misinterpreted it at first glance)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 12y agoHow is this possible? To take a random example I'm familiar with, making small modifications outside certain small bounds requires a lot of paperwork and approval. This can be something as simple as adding a tow hook to an airplane known to be good for towing. If you're lucky and the modification has been done before and somebody went through the trouble of getting the modification certified, you can take advantage of the work they've already done, greatly reducing the trouble involved as long as you can get permission from whoever got it certified. If you're doing something totally new (or something other people have done, but nobody got it certified for general use) then you have to file a form describing what you're going to do, get it approved, do the work, get the result inspected.... All this even for small aircraft where you'd be very hard-pressed to use them to kill more than two people (including the pilot) even if for some reason you had a goal of maximizing deaths. Yet, when handling nuclear waste, apparently people can just randomly decide to completely change an important component used in the process? Or was the change studied and approved by an engineer, but the problem was missed? The article certainly doesn't make it sound like this happened, but it could be an omission.
- Retric 12y agoBad instructions. Basicly someone said use brand X without specifying what about X you needed. So, someone used brand X with a different formula and never thought you needed to get approval because there was no change.
- mikeash 12y agoIt still seems completely crazy that someone would write instructions that way in the first place. Surely you'd specify at least something about the composition as well?
- ScottBurson 12y agoThe strangest thing about this is that the organic cat litters are quite a bit more expensive than clay. So it wasn't done to save money. What the reason possibly could have been I cannot fathom.
- yohui 12y agoPerhaps the brand they had been using switched to organic? I suppose it's also possible that someone just assumed organic == better, or there were both organic and non-organic versions of the same cat litter, and a mix-up resulted when the premium product came up first in their search results. If they'd known what the litter would be used for, I would hope they'd have been more careful, but I don't know at what level in the supply chain the decision to switch was made.
- natch 12y agoBags get mixed up.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- spikels 12y agoHilarious - you can't make this stuff up. I thought we were told that organic == better. I can just see it happening: Vendor: "For an extra 95 cents per pound I can get it in Organic". DoE Supply Clerk smiles and thinks of cute kittens. :)
- cbsmith 12y agoAnyone else have a disturbing "Brawndo has got what plants crave" moment?