nuclear-news

Failures of management at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons complex

• Rebranding the nuclear weapons complex won’t reform it, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Robert Alvarez, 18 Jan 15“………..The NNSA was removed from its transuranic waste management responsibilities at Los Alamos and, in an unusual “management alert,” the Energy Department’s inspector general warned that contractors at the lab—the source of the compromised waste drum—“failed to ensure that changes to waste treatment procedures were properly documented, reviewed, and approved, and that they incorporated all environmental requirements.” Recently, the State of New Mexico levied a fine of more than $54 million against the contractor running Los Alamos, which the Energy Department is contesting.  At the same time, the Energy Department has cut the Los Alamos contractor’s award fee by $57 million, a 90 percent reduction.

  About a month after the accident at WIPP, the advisory panel informed Congress in its interim report that the NNSA had to go. http://thebulletin.org/rebranding-nuclear-weapons-complex-wont-reform-it7935

• The WIPP leak: Another embarrassment. In February 2014, in the midst of the panel’s deliberations, another major mishap involving NNSA and its contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory occurred. At least one drum containing a potentially explosive mixture of plutonium waste burst open at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) geologic repository in New Mexico. The wastes shot up about a half-mile through the ventilation system to the surface, contaminating 22 workers. The Energy Department estimates it may take years before it can restore operation at the nation’s only operating high-hazard radioactive waste geological disposal site, at an expense of more than $550 million…….  http://thebulletin.org/rebranding-nuclear-weapons-complex-wont-reform-it7935
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January 20, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war