New director of Los Alamos National Laboratory acknowledges problems, pushes for accountability

After safety breaches, new Los Alamos director pushes for accountability at nuclear weapons lab, Science , By April Reese, Jan. 19, 2018 ,—The new director of Los Alamos National Laboratory here, Terry Wallace, took the helm earlier this month at a particularly challenging time in the U.S. nuclear weapons lab’s storied 75-year history. Repeated safety violations necessitated a temporary shutdown of much of the lab’s plutonium facility from 2013 to 2015, and further infractions in August 2017— including improper storage of plutonium metal that could have triggered an uncontrolled fission reaction—prompted the U.S. Department of Energy, Los Alamos’s overseer, to put the lab’s management contract out for bid. A consortium will continue to run the national laboratory until the winning bidder takes over the $2.5-billion-a-year operation this fall.

Since it was built in secret in 1943 to house the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb in 1945, Los Alamos has diversified its R&D portfolio. Its research areas now include everything from studying wildfire behavior to developing vaccines. But the lab’s central mission may well be updated in the coming months: President Donald Trump’s administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the media earlier this month, signaled interest in developing new low-yield nuclear weapons, even as some of the lab’s most knowledgeable weapons experts are nearing retirement age. …….

We’re the only place [in the United States] that does large-scale work on plutonium. We must meet the expectations to be the safest and most secure site in the country. At the same time, the realization that those expectations are under a magnifying glass, sometimes I think we miss that.

We cannot have any accidents. We do things at times that are simply unacceptable……..

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/after-safety-breaches-new-los-alamos-director-pushes-accountability-nuclear-weapons-lab

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