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Nuclear Waste Accident Costs Los Alamos Contractor $57 Million
HughPickens.com writes The LA Times reports that Los Alamos National Security, the contractor managing the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, NM has been slapped with a $57-million reduction in its fees for 2014, largely due to a costly nuclear waste accident in which a 55-gallon drum packaged with plutonium waste from bomb production erupted after being placed in a 2,150-foot underground dump in the eastern New Mexico desert. Casks filled with 3.2 million cubic feet of deadly radioactive wastes remain buried at the crippled plant and the huge facility was rendered useless. The exact causes of the chemical reaction are still under investigation, but Energy Department officials say a packaging error at Los Alamos caused a reaction inside the drum. The radioactive material went airborne, contaminating a ventilation shaft that went to the surface giving low-level doses of radiation to 21 workers. According to a DOE report, the disaster at WIPP is rooted in careless contractors and lack of DOE oversight (PDF). "The accident was a horrific comedy of errors," says James Conca, a scientific advisor and expert on the WIPP. "This was the flagship of the Energy Department, the most successful program it had. The ramifications of this are going to be huge. Heads will roll."
The accident is likely to cause at least an 18-month shutdown and possibly a closure that could last several years. Waste shipments have already backed up at nuclear cleanup projects across the country, which even before the accident were years behind schedule. According to the Times, the cost of the accident, including likely delays in cleanup projects across the nation, will approach $1 billion. But some nuclear weapons scientists say the fine is an overreaction. "It was a mistake by an individual — a terrible mistake — and Washington now wants to punish a lot of people," says Conca. "The amount of radiation that was released was trivial. As long as you don't lick the walls, you can't get any radiation down there. Why are we treating this like Fukushima?"
The accident is likely to cause at least an 18-month shutdown and possibly a closure that could last several years. Waste shipments have already backed up at nuclear cleanup projects across the country, which even before the accident were years behind schedule. According to the Times, the cost of the accident, including likely delays in cleanup projects across the nation, will approach $1 billion. But some nuclear weapons scientists say the fine is an overreaction. "It was a mistake by an individual — a terrible mistake — and Washington now wants to punish a lot of people," says Conca. "The amount of radiation that was released was trivial. As long as you don't lick the walls, you can't get any radiation down there. Why are we treating this like Fukushima?"
because you're a bunch of drama loving media controlled schmucks.
Even without accounting for proper disposal of nuclear waste, renewable energy already got cheaper than your favorite nuclear power plant.
So say goodby to nuclear power, its obsolete technology due to capitalism. The only thing keeping this alive is the power and money of those that invested and got rich with nuclear power over the last 50 years.
My bet ist, with lobbyism they might be able to keep nuclear power alive for maybe 20 years to go, but then everyone will pretend and suddely 'wonder' how the hell crazy those humans back in 2000 were that they could even think of using such a dangerous and wasteful powersource.
They are.
Ie, minor fines, scapegoating, and under-reporting.
"It was a mistake by an individual..."
A with out good process, more individuals will be making more mistakes. Mistakes that "will approach $1 billion". There is a good reason people are going to walk up the chain and start blaming entire contracting companies, and hopefully start blaming the people that hired the contractors, and blame the people who wrote the processes that the contractors were supposed to follow.
If we can't get the storage of nuclear waste from weapons and power production right, then we're in a real pickle. A terrible radioactive pickle.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
- Is why they're making comparisons to the semi recent, other comedy of errors that involved radiation release as a result of lax oversight.
It's not entirely clear in the summary, but the accident didn't happen at Los Alamos, it happened at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the $19b pilot plant that is at least in part a replacement for the Yucca Mountain plans.
Also, the original mistake that caused the chemical reaction? They used the wrong kind of cat litter to package the plutonium!
This is surprising to me, as I recall reading about plans for Canadian underground storage of nuclear waste back in the 90s. The plans then were to vitrify it - process it into a glass crystal - so that (a) Terrists couldn't get at it, and (b) it would be inert. I'm kind of amazed that they the DOE is happy with using steel drums and cat litter on their plutonium, though if it works (assuming you get the right kitty litter) then there's no reason to stop using it, I suppose.
$57 million penalty for what will cost taxpayers $1 billion + in the long run. they must have the same lobbyists as the banking industry.
If a single individual can make a mistake of this magnitude, without it being caught by checks and doublechecks, then the process itself is fragile and flawed. That is a systemic problem and deserves a systemic response.
ok new rule no homers or homer.
And we just need 2M to buy him out.
I was just in the Wieliczka Salt Mine, and that is literally what I did. :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
Koans and fables for the software engineer
"It was a mistake by an individual"
And the individual's supervisor and the person who trained the individual and the person who devised the individual's test after the training and the person who checked that the test was suitable and the person that did the risk assessment for the work the individual was doing and the person who checked the risk assessment for the work.
There are methods for making sure accidents don't happen, if those methods aren't followed then a lot of people are responsible.
You'd think they could get this stuff right after half a century of dealing with waste.
Could be worse... The Mafia's Deadly Garbage: Italy's Growing Toxic Waste Scandal
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"The accident was a horrific comedy of errors," says James Conca, a scientific advisor and expert on the WIPP. "
What comedy, there's nothing funny about plutonium leaking. Once it got into the ventilation shafts it got into the air for us to breathe and improve our chances of getting cancer. So the whole so called isolation project was compromised.
Haven't read all the linked articles through yet, but it's been mentioned in the past- and again in the articles- that one of the reasons for the explosion may have been the use of organic-based kitty litter(!) reacting badly with the materials being disposed of, and that the inorganic version should have been used.
One version I heard was that they changed the kitty litter formulation; this version suggests that they bought organic instead of inorganic kitty litter because of a typo.
Now, there's nothing wrong with using what amounts to kitty litter to do whatever it was being used for. If that does the job, fine.
But whichever of the cases described was true, a problem is that if the stuff they're buying is intended and sold as kitty litter, it's quite possible that the makers may feel at liberty to change the formulation in a way that doesn't effect its use as kitty litter, but massive alters its safety as a "nuclear waste disposal material".
If having organic matter in your kitty litter could inadvertantly turn the nuclear material into a form of radioactive explosive, then you should be damn sure that you're getting the inorganic formulation from a supplier that can guarantee that this is what you're getting. It won't be called "kitty litter" even if that's what- in effect- it is, and it'll probably cost a lot more, but the supplier will (or should be) in the s*** if they supply the wrong type, whereas are Los Alamos going to sue "Pets R Us" for causing a nuclear explosion even if they *did* inadvertantly put organic in an inorganic bag, or change the formulation with insufficient notice (or whatever)?
So this is why (e.g.) the military (for example) might pay a lot more for a given item than you or I might pay over the counter. That, and the fact that they're probably diverting the money to some dubious black ops...!
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The huge (and they _are_ huge) cost of cleanup from places like Hanford has to be understood in the context under which it was created.
The people at Hanford were tasked with creating weapons to kill people, a million at a time. Given that criterion, is it any wonder that they weren't worried about a few salmon, or clean groundwater. They believed at the time that "Nuculer war, toe to toe with the Rooskies" was right around the corner, and they were dealing with the possibility of hundreds of millions of dead. All other reasons just didn't matter.
That turned out not to be the case, but hindsight is always so excellent.
Now, the pendulum has swung so far the other way, we want to clean up Hanford (as an example) well enough that we could build a school on the location. That doesn't seem like a realistic goal. As for a plutonium contaminated waste facility, I should point out that Los Alamos had quite the plutonium problem. They solved it by painting the walls coral - bright bleedin' orange - and then painting over with white paint. The rule was simple - if you see orange, call the safety people. It was (and is) not a perfect solution, but it was (and is) a workable one.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
$137 billion. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Is this what slashdot has come to?
Fine. I'm out. I first got my /. account back in 1998 but this is the last bullshit I'll tolerate. This site is no longer relevant.
That turned out not to be the case, but hindsight is always so excellent.
The irony is that some percentage of their goal will be achieved no matter what they intended. It's a fools errand that leads them to believe that they have control over these materials for the geological timeframes that they will exist while they decay.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
While the Fukushima cost has been identified at $137 Billion we need to understand that the explosion has rendered the entire underground facility essentially too contaminated with radiation to be safely worked in
It is also a case of penny wise and pound foolish
In a push to 'save money' DOE decided against the use of 12-foot concrete explosion isolation wall, which had been installed in Panel 1, 2 and 5 within the underground structure
Now, because of the explosion, not only storage area 6, 7 become contaminated, the entire huge underground structure has become too 'hot' and one doesn't have to 'lick the wall' to be massively irradiated
BTW, talk is cheap. Instead of uttering 'lick the wall' that Jame Conca should volunteer himself to work inside the gigantic underground structure - and whether he ends up licking the wall or not, that's all up to him !
Uses waste for fuel. Go for it... Don't throw it in a leaky hole in the ground
Because we're not only dealing with a radiation leak here, we're dealing with an airborne contaminant that just happens to be the most toxic substance known to Man?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I don't know whether kitty litter was involved in the accident or not, but there is a reason why someone might use kitty litter instead of something purposely made: some kitty litter is 100% clay. It contains nothing else. 100% clay kitty litters are often advertised as such and the manufacturers go to great lengths to state that the product has nothing added to it. I know this, not because I have a cat, but because I have often used kitty litter for the substrate in fish tanks. It is by far the cheapest and easiest to get form of clay.
I can well understand that someone might realize that this is the cheapest way to buy clay and buy it for other purposes. If your suspicion is correct, then there is a *massive* problem if the people ordering and receiving the kitty litter don't know that it is clay. They need to understand what they are doing and if they receive something other than pure clay, they can't use it. In other words, buy buying the cheaper clay in the form of kitty litter, they have pushed the responsibility from the manufacturer to themselves in terms of making sure they have something that will work for their task. Personally, I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea because you often have more control over training/oversight than you do with 3rd parties. However, if this was indeed the problem, then clearly they have taken the savings but not done anything on their side to ensure that they have the right material. That would not be a mistake with a single individual, but rather a systemic error.
The problem is not at this point any radiation risk. The problem is DOE is INCOMPETENT. An accident cannot be tolerated in nuclear materials handling. No matter what you say about how great and safe nuclear power CAN BE, the fact is, give the actual mechanisms of management and implementation, IT'S NOT. In this case, it may have been a relatively minor mistake, but minor mistakes can be catastrophic, and THAT'S WHY NUCLEAR POWER IS A BAD IDEA. Either government or corporate bureaucracies are completely incompetent at managing it. Do you want a BP running a nuclear power station? You remember, the BP that was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster?
We aren't even treating Fukushima like Fukushima. News blackout, secret censorship, counter argumentation by Government funded scientist as to "harmlessness".
Hint, there is no safe level of radiation and the true levels of cantamination are unkown because thery are not being measured globaly or reported, for that matter.
Besides you need a degree in Nuclear Physics to truly understand radiation exposures and radioactive breakdown byproducts.
Is this a metaphorical solution that I'm not understanding, or an actual solution to a problem that I don't understand. I'm presuming the problem is radiation contamination, but I'm not understanding how deteriorating white paint that shows orange paint underneath is a viable detection solution.
In this case, the earth is blasted out of its orbit around the Sun into outer space.
This sounds like a canary/coal mine solution... but I also don't understand the chemistry of it. Does anybody know why a radiation leak would cause an orange-then-white painted wall to show white when there isn't a leak and orange when there is?
I can only guess that the walls were radioactive and they "solved" the problem by encapsulating them with paint. Ironically, it'd probably be the one place where using lead-based paint would be a good thing...
(Actually, I bet they used lead-based bright orange paint to encapsulate the radioactive stuff, then non-lead white paint to encapsulate the lead!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The problems with the system are obvious but I think it's hilarious that a contractor was finally held responsible for fucking up. I mean, they lost 90% of their contract price for this year because of this accident. Hopefully, this would make them act more properly now that their bottom line is at risk.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Since the ground is owned by government, if you don't pay to get it out, then you won't be allowed to get it out. Fairly simple.
if you pay for extraction, then that's claimed to be a tax, which you are against. Fairly simple too.