MAP, Initial Plutonium release from the WIPP radioactive waste facility.
Areas in green were affected by wind currents during the first few days.
Critical failures of leadership at every level.
REPORTED BY THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL OCTOBER 22, 2015:
A Department of Energy oversight team found an overall “negative trend” in the operation of a southeast New Mexico nuclear waste repository following two serious accidents, but plant managers say progress has been made since the review concluded.
In a memo distributed to employees and obtained by the Journal, DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments analyzed operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant over a year through May — a period in which WIPP has been trying to recover from an underground fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release.
“During this period, strong and unrealistic schedule pressures on the workforce contributed to poor safety performance, and incidents during that time are indicators of the potential for a future serious safety incident,” the memo said.
In addition to the effect of schedule pressures on safety, the memo flagged “a backlog of hundreds of preventative maintenance items” and the use of “extensive overtime” that could force workers to work “past the point of safety.”
NO ONE WANTS THE BLAME
New Mexico's congressional delegation said in a joint statement "a series of critical failures of leadership at every level led to the very serious accident and release that put numerous New Mexicans at risk, shuttered WIPP for over a year and (has) already cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. This report makes clear that the DOE and its contractors failed to keep faith with the people of New Mexico."
LOS ALAMOS NUCLEAR LABORATORY (LANL) director Charles McMillan wrote in a letter to staff that "the report points out serious deficiencies in our processes and procedures...
We now know from the investigations that if LANL had followed certain basic steps, this event would not have happened.
Also, if we had complied with our hazardous waste permit, we would have avoided the serious legal and credibility issues we now face... Quite simply, we failed to execute sufficient regulatory and technical reviews in our management of the legacy (transuranic waste) nitrate-salt waste stream."
THE LEAKING BARRELS OF WASTE AT WIPP CAME FROM LOS ALAMOS, IF YOU RECALL.
THEY HAD BEEN IMPROPERLY PACKAGED AND SHIPPED AND IMPROPERLY STORED WITHOUT BEING CHECKED, OR SO IT SEEMS.
THEY HAD BEEN IMPROPERLY PACKAGED AND SHIPPED AND IMPROPERLY STORED WITHOUT BEING CHECKED, OR SO IT SEEMS.
(Sources: Albuquerque Journal, Santa Fe New Mexican, AP Wire News)
What happened to those who tried to blow the whistle at Los Alamos?
Nothing good.
A "must-read" for anyone concerned with what really goes on to protect nclear facilities and those who run them from public scrutiny.
Nothing good.
A "must-read" for anyone concerned with what really goes on to protect nclear facilities and those who run them from public scrutiny.
WIPP and That Barrel From LANL: What Really Happened
A six-month investigation by the Santa Fe New Mexican
A six-month investigation by the Santa Fe New Mexican
"In the summer of 2012, Gov. Susana Martinez visited the hilltop facilities of Los Alamos National Laboratory to commemorate a milestone.
The lab, under an agreement with the state, had just shipped its 1,000th truckload of Cold War-era nuclear waste from the grounds of Los Alamos to a salt cavern deep under the Southern New Mexico desert.
"The achievement meant the lab was well on its way to meeting a June 30, 2014, deadline imposed by Martinez to remove radioactive gloves, machinery and other equipment left over from decades of nuclear weapons research.
"For Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private consortium that operates the lab, the stakes were high.
Meeting the deadline would help it secure an extension of its $2.2 billion annual contract from the U.S. Department of Energy.
"But the following summer, workers packaging the waste came across a batch that was extraordinarily acidic, making it unsafe for shipping.
The lab's guidelines called for work to shut down while the batch underwent a rigid set of reviews to determine how to treat it, a time-consuming process that jeopardized the lab's goal of meeting the deadline, and securing an extension on its $2.2 billion annual contract from the DoE.
"Instead, the lab and its various contractors took shortcuts in treating the acidic nuclear waste, adding neutralizer and a wheat-based organic kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The combination turned the waste into a potential bomb that one lab chemist later characterized as akin to plastic explosives, according to a six-month investigation by The New Mexican.
"The lab then shipped a 55-gallon drum of the volatile material 330 miles to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, southeast of Carlsbad. Documents accompanying the drum, which were supposed to include a detailed description of its contents, were deeply flawed.
They made no mention of the acidity or the neutralizer, and they mischaracterized the kitty litter as a clay-based material not the more combustible organic variety that most chemists would have recognized as hazardous if mixed with waste laden with nitrate salts, according to interviews and a review of thousands of pages of documents and internal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request..."
[Get more details: "LANL officials downplayed waste's dangers even after leak"s]
HERE IS A PART OF THIS ONGOING SAGA THAT MANY MAY NOT BE AWARE OF...
USING AND THEREFORE HAVING TO FIND STORAGE FOR MOX FUEL AT NUCLEAR SITES SHOULD BE TERMINATED, ACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE).
BUT CONGRESS WON'T ALLOW THE DOE TOP PULL THE PLUG, NOT EVEN AT ONE OF THE WORST SITES IN THE U.S., THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
CONGRESSMEN SEE SUCH SITES AS MONEY-MAKERS, OR AS SOME SAY, "PORK BARREL OPPORTUNITIES" FOR INCOME FOR THEIR STATES, SO EVEN IF SUCH WASTE MAY BE ESCAPING AND CAUSING ILLNESS OR POTENTIALLY EVEN DEATH FOR PEOPLE NEARBY, CONGRESS HAD RATHER MAKE A FEW MILLION BUCKS FOR THEIR CAMPAIGN FINANCIERS, FOR "BIG NUKE", THAN ATTEND TO THE HEALTH OF AVERAGE CITIZENS, OR SAVE TAXPAYERS BILLIONS.
CONGRESS HAS ALWAYS SEEN THE REST OF US AS GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO JUST KEEP PAYING THE BILL FOR THE BILLS THEY PASS, NO MATTER HOW LUDICROUS OR EVEN CRIMINAL THOSE CONGRESSIONAL "BILLS" ARE.
From the union of concerned scientists
CONGRESS HAS ALWAYS SEEN THE REST OF US AS GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO JUST KEEP PAYING THE BILL FOR THE BILLS THEY PASS, NO MATTER HOW LUDICROUS OR EVEN CRIMINAL THOSE CONGRESSIONAL "BILLS" ARE.
From the union of concerned scientists
"South Carolina taxpayers [WILL] pony-up nearly $1 billion a year for the next 30 years—the amount that nearly all parties agree is the minimum needed to successfully complete the project. Yet even if Congress were to provide full funding today there is no guarantee the money flow would be sustained over decades, given all that could go wrong along the way.
This is why the Department of Energy (DOE), which is the program’s sponsor and strongest advocate for more than a decade, now wants to pull the plug, if only Congress would let it do so.
DOE’s preferred approach is to “downblend” the excess plutonium by mixing it with an inert material known as “stardust”and package it as waste for disposal in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
DOE’s preferred approach is to “downblend” the excess plutonium by mixing it with an inert material known as “stardust”and package it as waste for disposal in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
As confirmed by the “red team” tasked by DOE Secretary Moniz to take a fresh look at the various options for plutonium disposition, the downblending process is far simpler than MOX, would require much less new capital investment, and has already been used to dispose of several metric tons of excess plutonium.
The red team report estimates that the approach would cost about half as much as the MOX program and would have much less technical risk. This assessment takes into account the fact that WIPP is currently not accepting waste because of the accident that it experienced in February 2014 but is projected to begin operating again by the end of 2016.
There is no question that the February 2014 WIPP accident cast doubt over the safety of DOE’s operations at the site. But one also has to consider the alternatives.
If DOE is unable to safely operate what is essentially a fancy hole in the ground [WIPP] for burying nuclear waste, then how can we reasonably expect it to safely oversee the far more complex and hazardous MOX program?
The High Bridge report failed to mention that all nonessential environmental management operations were currently suspended at the Savannah River Site, SC, following a September 3rd near-criticality accident at the HB-Line, a facility being used to produce plutonium oxide for use as feedstock in the MOX plant."The Recovery Plan That Isn't
"Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, said,
"Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, said,
'Thirty-five years ago, DOE was saying WIPP was going to be open by the mid-'80s. Then 25 years ago, in the late '80s, they were saying WIPP was going to be open in the early '90s, and it didn't open until 1999. They weren't realistically looking at what it was going to take to open WIPP then, and now they're not being realistic about when it will reopen. It will take a lot longer than that, and it's going to cost a lot more than they're saying.'
"Without knowing the cause of the leak, the extent of the contamination in the WIPP caverns or whether more breached drums may be lurking in the cavern, Hancock said the Energy Department's recovery plan could be premature. 'Nowhere in the report does it say the fire and radiation leak that happened this year will never happen again', said Hancock, who favors an independent technical investigation and public study to develop a path forward at WIPP that is disconnected from the Energy Department and its contractor operating WIPP, Nuclear Waste Partnership.
"'They're saying, 'Trust us with the safety standards. We'll define what's safe or not.' That's not acceptable,' he said. 'We don't trust them. They've shown themselves not to be trustworthy.' Hancock described the cost estimate outlined in the plan as 'dishonest' because it neglects to mention the more than $150 million in operating expenses at WIPP for the fiscal year ahead, when even the most optimistic estimates envision WIPP will remain mothballed.
"Hancock said the Energy Department's goal of partially reopening WIPP within the next 18 months would be virtually impossible if the department were to follow standard regulatory protocol for the waste dump, which includes public comment on the proposed changes.
"'It's not a recovery plan, it's a shut-out-the-public plan,' Hancock said. 'That's not going to happen. The public is not going to be shut out of this process. It's a nonstarter.'"
HANCOCK'S FULL REPORT CAN BE DOWNLOADED AS A PDF <HERE>.
REWARD FAILURE
WIPP Contractor Received $1.9 Million Bonus 5 Days After Fire! "Just five days after an underground truck fire closed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Energy Department awarded the contractor that operates the nuclear repository $1.9 million for 'excellent' performance during the past year.
"One radiation leak and two sharply worded accident investigation reports later slamming the same contractor for long-running safety and maintenance problems, that award now looks to some like insult atop injury.
How could there have been such a disconnect between the Department of Energy's own assessment of its contractor's performance and what independent investigators would find soon after?
The answer isn't clear and neither are the consequences to the DOE's local field office, headquarters or to operating contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership leaving some observers asking why there haven't been more repercussions for documented failings throughout the system..."
WHEN I READ ALL THIS, ALL I CAN THINK OF IS "THE BROTHERHOOD OF LIARS AND CHEATS"... AND OUR CONGRESS JUST MAY BE THEIR KING.
THE DOE FOUGHT THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO OVER THEW MEGA-MILLION DOLLARS IN FINES, OVER EXPIRED PERMITS, SAFETY VIOLATIONS, EVERYTHING, AND THE DOE WON.
WHO LOST?
WHO LOST?
THE RESIDENTS AFFECTED BY THE FAILURES AT WIPP AND LOS ALAMOS...THE ONES WHO WILL WIND UP PAYING FOR THE DOE'S MISTAKES AND NEGLIGENCE... FINANCIALLY AND IN EVERY OTHER WAY, AVERAGE CITIZENS LOST.
AGAIN.
___________________
SEE ALSO:
~ For a virtual Arsenal of Information on nuclear news and updates, always visit this site <here>.
- Patrick Malone, SF New Mexican: Federal report: LANL Violated Environmental Requirements
- DOE Inspector General LANL Report: view/download
No comments:
Post a Comment