Part One of Two Parts
One big problem with nuclear power that I have repeatedly mentioned is the fact that many government contractors involved with nuclear weapons research and production do not always follow the rule for dealing with nuclear materials. To make matters worse, they often try to hide their mistakes and lie about mistakes that are discovered by authorities. This has been a problem since the beginning of the nuclear age and it continues today.
A new study shows that in the last five years there have been twenty five cases where nuclear weapons contractor have been guilty of either failing to package or ship hazardous materials properly including plutonium. Often, the packages containing hazardous materials were not properly labeled with respect to the nature and danger of the contents. This meant that the receivers of the packages did not take the proper precautions to deal with a threat to them and the public. Some of these incidents were uncovered by inspector during the transit of the packages. Other times, the nature of the contents of packages were discovered when the packages were opened. In some cases, reception areas wound up being contaminated. Penalties were either light or non-existent.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is government owned but privately run. It is about fifty miles north of Albuquerque. LANL is the biggest lab in the network of U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories and is critical in the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The LANL has been in the news lately because of many problems with the operation of the lab. Mistakes at the LANL even forced the temporary closure of the New Mexico Waste Isolation Processing Plant where nuclear weapons-related wastes are disposed of.
In 2012, the LANL sent a package containing plutonium to a lab at the University of New Mexico. The package had no labeling that would indicate that it contained a dangerous radioactive material. The University lab was expecting to receive non-radioactive metal panels that were inert versions of radioactive panels that the lab used to test radiation detectors. The package containing the plutonium was opened at the lab without the necessary precautions because there was no warning label and the contents were assumed to be free of radioactivity.
One of the panels was bent when it was unpacked. Radioactive particles were released and the lab was contaminated. The lab was cleaned up and decontaminated within a few days, but it took more than a year for the debris to be retrieved for disposal by the LANL. A representative of the University said that the final disposition of the debris took so long because of “the high radio-toxicity of the radionuclide.”
In the fall of 2014, the contractors who operate the Nevada National Security Site mistakenly sent radioactive materials with no warning label to one of their own satellite offices at the LANL. That office did not have a radiation control expert with the necessary training to deal with the material in the package.
In December of last year, a tank of tritium gas was shipped from the Savannah River National Laboratory to the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico but should have been shipped to the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque.
Please read Part Two
