Learn more :: Article Arhives :: Official: Safety Issues Remain at LANL

official: Safety issues remain at Los Alamos
By Diana Heil, October 30, 2004

LOS ALAMOS: Over the three months Los Alamos National Laboratory has been shut down, a senior safety official with the U.S. Department of Energy has uncovered problems at some of the nuclear facilities.

In mid-July, Lab Director Pete Nanos stopped all work being done by 12,000 employees, then made safety and security the focus.

The painful, multimillion dollar process is almost over and some top security work has resumed.

But Chris Steele, DOE's senior safety official at Los Alamos, foresees delays. He is responsible for making sure the lab's nuclear operations do not put workers, the public or the environment at undue risk.

"It's likely that all the facilities won't start up right away," he said Thursday. "Many very critical issues have been discovered. Some of our facilities are concerning us."

Steele would not name the facilities or say how many, because DOE has not decided how to handle the situation.

"What we've done so far is start up all the pencil sharpeners and the computers," Steele said. "But we haven¹t started up the nukes or the high-hazard operations like beryllium."

The lab had 45 nuclear safety violations from Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 1, 2004 - a fourfold increase over previous years, Steele said.

Nanos took strong action after a laser damaged a student intern's unprotected eye at a non-nuclear facility, and two computer disks containing classified information could not be found. When the shutdown began, he said employees had a disregard for procedures that went beyond two incidents.

The lab formed teams to evaluate policies and procedures in eight areas: Safety, security, environmental protection, the behavior of employees, the competency of management, equipment, training and controls for nuclear facilities.

"We've uncovered a lot of stuff," Steele said. "Not everything's big. But there's enough of the little stuff to lead you to believe you've got a systems problem."

In one case, 1,000 to 3,000 drums of plutonium were stacked too high. "If they fall over, they'll break open, and you'll have plutonium all over the place," Steele said.

In another case, someone jammed a screwdriver in a broken switch to make it work rather than repairing it, he said, noting nearby lethal doses of radiation.

Before restarting activities, DOE must concur with LANL's approach. Steele said firing up a nuclear facility without adequate safety procedures intact would be irresponsible.

"We have a veto vote," Steele said of DOE's Los Alamos Site Office.

But he said Los Alamos National Lab is being aggressive. "I think the lab is trying very hard here to make a difference," he said.

Gradually, employees have returned to normal work routines, except in the most dangerous or vulnerable parts of the lab. As of Friday, 83 percent of moderate-risk activities and 21 percent of high-risk activities were back on line. All low-risk activities have been allowed for a while. The lab also has approved the opening of six new libraries to store Classified Removable Electronic Media, such as the computer disks that couldn't be accounted for, according to lab spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas.

By next week, Nanos is expected to sign letters of approval for remaining activities to resume, except for a few in the division where the computer disks should have been, DeLucas said. His signature means, "I believe you are safe and secure and can restart," she said.

But signed letters don't mean all activities start right away, particularly at nuclear facilities. "You can't flip a switch and consider it open," DeLucas said.

She described a step-bystep process that might take a few days or a month. She said the lab has identified risks at each nuclear facility and determined ways to mitigate those risks, she said. "All of that must take place before performing activities in that facility," DeLucas said.

John Conway, who heads the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in Washington, D.C., said his staff is watching the restart process carefully.

Congress set up the board as an independent, albeit federally funded, advisory agency. Two men with doctoral degrees in engineering are stationed in the Los Alamos office where Steele works. On a weekly basis, they write memos describing how out of date LANL's safety documents are for nuclear facilities and how that contributes to safety infractions.

"It's all important," Conway said. "But right now a top priority from my point of view, from a safety point of view, is resuming operations, because we have materials there that have to be stabilized."

Conway said the safety analyses are paperwork and "a very small part" of overall safety management. They are adequate, he said, but need to be brought up to date based on lessons learned in the field. The safety guidelines at the plutonium facility, Technical Area-55, are 7 years old.

"If they weren't adequate, then we'd be recommending (LANL) not operate under them," Conway said.

Conway wants the lab to restart, get rid of unstable radioactive materials and then revise the safety analyses for each nuclear facility. Meanwhile, 2,000 transuranic waste drums must be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad. A sealed room where two workers were contaminated with plutonium-238 last August must be cleaned. Corroding cans of plutonium-238 must be repackaged into modern containers.

Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project in Washington State said Conway needs to be a stronger regulator and insist all the regulations be updated before nuclear work restarts. There are 16 nuclear facilities and 11 waste sites at the lab.

Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico in Santa Fe, added: "In July the lab director vowed zero tolerance of compromises to safety, but now the most dangerous facilities are restarting without approved safety bases, making the half-billion-dollar-plus stand down in operations a sham."

Coghlan said the safety controls should be updated, approved and future compliance guaranteed before LANL's nuclear facilities reopen.

Every year, LANL is supposed to update safety documents or write a letter saying nothing has changed, according to the Nuclear Safety Management rule. "The (DOE) site office has not enforced the rule that there be annual updates," said Charles Keilers of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

Steele, who reviews and approves safety analyses, has a reputation for being a stickler. "I'm a bottleneck," he said. "I have caused some of the backlog. I have to believe in it before I sign it."

He said he reworks every calculation, mainly because he doesn't trust the work of safety analysts.

The update for the plutonium facility has been awaiting DOE approval for more than two years, according to the Safety Board. A recent federal investigation found the lack of current container requirements in the safety documents at the plutonium facility contributed to workers' exposure to plutonium-238 last August when they handled rusty, taped-shut cans.

Steele said his staff, though lacking enough safety analysts, has worked on updates and completed a few.

By October 2005, he said, all safety analyses and controls will be updated. "We're going to move to make it faster than that," Steele said.

Originally Published by the Santa Fe New Mexican

Learn more :: Article Arhives :: Official: Safety Issues Remain at LANL