https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/sparks-flying-from-nuclear-waste-barrel-prompt-investigation/article_0136daa2-9334-11eb-8d3b-c39673baff5a.html
Given that LANL has trouble dealing with the waste it already has, should they really be trying to machine pits?
38 comments:
"Given that LANL has trouble dealing with the waste it already has, should they really be trying to machine pits?"
I know there are a number of trolls on this blog but I think you have a valid point. I am rather dubious that we can get the quality of workforce necessary to do this kind of work safely. The other thing is that if something goes wrong we could have Rocky Flats 2. There has been a big push to get this work due to the money it will bring in. There has been lots of talk about how to house all these new people, commutes and so on, but I have not heard anything about how we are going to attract the level of people we need to do pit work. Although some people are cynical about this type of work you do need skilled people that are very dependable, careful, and consistent. Such people are in rather high demand. When things go wrong with this kind of work it goes really wrong. I think they figure they will just hire all these random people and assume it will work. It could be a real disaster and they need to carefully think about this.
"Given that LANL has trouble dealing with the waste it already has, should they really be trying to machine pits?"
Please explain what one has to do with the other.
On the bright side, it wasn't kitty litter this time.
Glad we have the self-appointed expert, Jay Coghlan on the job. I’m certain his insights will be both numerous and scientific. Fortunately, the science will also be carefully and exhaustively reported by the only publication up to that task, The Santa Fe New Mexican.
"Given that LANL has trouble dealing with the waste it already has, should they really be trying to machine pits?"
"Please explain what one has to do with the other."
I am not the original poster and you do have a point. I am assuming you are saying that the two tasks are sufficiently different they simply cannot be compared. However the counter points would be that (1) the Pits could lead to more waste so how can we handle even more, (2) LANL has not been doing particularly well with high risk materials so what is to say that we could do even more of this kind of work.
Pits need to go to SRS anyways.
4/04/2021 6:48 AM
Pits need to go to SRS anyways.
4/04/2021 6:48 AM
I doubt pits "need" anything. If you have a point, you should try to make it.
4/04/2021 4:59 PM
Sure. SRS, being a longstanding production facility, is better suited both from a facilities standpoint and a personnel standpoint to take on the pit production. Their local politic better supports it too.
If you look at the history of NWC accidents, especially those at LANL, the main dangers are improper disposal of waste and deaths caused by criticality accidents. Both waste disposal and criticality safety have come a long, long way. In particular, it's almost impossible to get anything done at LANL anymore because the waste and chemical regulations have become so over the top. Therefore, if there is an issue with pit production, it won't be with waste, but more likely another criticality accident resulting in injury. During the cold war, if one person died in an accident, it was regrettable, but we learned and the work went on. Today, if there is one accident, we toss up our hands and give up. Therefore, the most likely scenario is that, eventually, one person gets hurt, the whole pit production machine stops, and never restarts.
Whether or not that actually has a significant impact on national security, I have no idea. But we simply don't have the fortitude or resilience to do anything challenging in this country anymore. NASA has been struggling to return to the moon for decades, and they can't even compete with their 50 year old self. Its not just LANL.
Presently, SRS has about as much going on in the pit production realm as Rocky Flats. The decision to even entertain that possibility was purely political.
"Today, if there is one accident, we toss up our hands and give up. Therefore, the most likely scenario is that, eventually, one person gets hurt, the whole pit production machine stops, and never restarts."
Overall a good post and I think this probably what will happen. Someone will get hurt, they will shut down for some time, with a slow restart. Another person will get hurt and than they just shut it down for good.
4/03/2021 4:58 PM said "Please explain what one has to do with the other."
It's basically saying that the LANL Conduct of Operations program is broken. It also suggests that the quality assurance program established to meet 10 CFR 830 is lacking in planning, execution, and assessment.
History has a way of repeating itself when people don't learn their lessons.
First a status review. There is no longer a Rocky Flats. Some of the workforce came to Los Alamos and the combined workforce is all there is for design of and implementation of production. The idea for Savannah River is to repurpose the cancelled, 70% completed, MOX facility by 2030. The conceptual plans for this project were just recently submitted to NNSA for approval. I leave it to the reader to estimate the likelihood of completing construction, training a workforce, designing, building, installing and testing the production equioment, maintaining a budget, etc. Now I expect that Washington and the military will not allow there to be the possibility of zero production capability at Los Alamos. After some more years, If there is continued risk, the production effort will be transferred to some other management, maybe the military.
"There is no longer a Rocky Flats. Some of the workforce came to Los Alamos and the combined workforce is all there is for design of and implementation of production."
As you pointed out "some" which is not all, this is on top of the a larger number of the former Rocky Flats people that did came are now retired. In fact we have only a very limited number of people with this former expertise around, so the idea that the "combined workforce" is all there to design and production is just out and out nonsense. This also counters the idea that LANL will need to hire thousands and thousands of new workers for this work. I would claim the biggest issue will be lack of expertise and the inability to hire and train an adequate workforce. I think the real issue for SR is the new infrastructure and equipment.
I agree with your point that things may not work out for Savannah River so LANL may be it. The issue remains if LANL can really do with all the rules and bizarre hiring practices. It would be a major task for Savannah to do this but at least they could probably get a decent workforce and infrastructure built. At LANL to get a decent workforce you need to hire outside of the state and offer a lot of money which is very difficult to do. Building adequate infrastructure at LANL also needs an outside workforce. During the cold war it could work where you just pay people enough money to move out to rural NM. There is a reason NM has so few high tech jobs, technical jobs or even industry. This will be biggest project that has been undertaken at LANL since the cold war, yet we do not have the cold war mindset that is needed to actually do it.
I agree that Los Alamos will never have zero capabilities in this area. Right now we have some capabilities. If it ever needed to be done right at LANL it could be done, but that is a different mindset than what the current plan is.
Parts of my comment have been misunderstood. I said only some of Rocky came to Los Alamos and that, combined with what was already at Los Alamos, is all you had as a workforce for the whole country. It has, I am sure, gotten worse and thus the large hiring program to get the head count up. The new people have to be trained. Savannah River is in a worse situation, with zero people in this area.
As to Savannah River building the infrastructure, they have not demonstrated a strong ability with the MOX facility. And as for a lot of money needed, that is part of what killed the MOX facility. Is there risk with Los Alamos? Yes. And the effort may have to be turned over to the military. Then the rules change, the mindset changes.
Savannah River still processes the raw material in H-area and has very qualified operators and a strong program. Many years ago they used to do milling and casting operations at SR. Moving them to pit production will take training but the underpinning is there. They will need new facilities but the transition will generally require new gloveboxes and utilities to support them. Structures already exist that are capable of the MAR. SR has built many gloveboxes and installed them over the past 20 years so dont discount their ability to compete. They are a production facility. Last, their political leaders want the work. That will play heavily too.
4/07/2021 12:59 AM
I have heard from many people that they just don't think Savannah River is going to be able to do this. I am not sure how much if this is just political talk, but from the information I have seen this seems to be the case. Sure LANL can do it but there will probably a lot of screw ups,
and DOE/NNSA just panic when that happens. You are right that we already do have key capabilities and some of the people, just needs to be scaled up. If SA falls through than LANL will need to be scaled way up. More people, more stuff means the odds are higher something will go wrong, just look at the old Rocky Flats.
Structures already exist that are capable of the MAR. SR has built many gloveboxes and installed them over the past 20 years so dont discount their ability to compete. They are a production facility. Last, their political leaders want the work. That will play heavily too.
4/07/2021 7:59 AM
In LANL there will be an accident and everyone including the guards will have to take glovebox training for months on end, then training on how to take glovebox training. Right after the training is done it will be discovered that one of the glove boxes was being used to make meth and the guy in charge was the nephew of the Mayor of Santa Fe, who needed a job when he got out of his last stint in jail. When people ask how could security let this happen after which it will be found that the head of security was married to the niece of the local judge who was accused of being part of a meth drug ring. No one knows why the head of security ever shows up but when he does it is in Bugati. Someone will say that this is corruption and this person will be fired for making racists accusations after the HR representative who happens to married to the said niece looks into the accusation. New Mexico is a special place.
Having a large scale pit production facility at Los Alamos is going to fun real fun...nod nod, wink wink.
4/07/2021 5:02 PM
I love your sarcasm! Build every conceivable problem into a strawman and then demolish it with tongue in cheek. Priceless!
Rocky Flats was a large production facility. Nobody is talking about such operations at either Savannah River or Los Alamos. Look at the talked about numbers. If Savannah River does not pan out, it does not mean that Los Alamos will be expanded to pick up the slack. It just means that new designs will not be built. There will be a capability big enough to maintain the existing force with minor modifications. Talking of a large scale production facility located anywhere in the US is just silly. If the planned Los Alamos facility fails, the effort will be turned over to another manager with close collaboration with the remaining Lab. There will be a very scaled down version of Rocky at LA.
I love your sarcasm! Build every conceivable problem into a strawman and then demolish it with tongue in cheek. Priceless!
4/07/2021 6:21 PM
No it was not sarcasm, perhaps a tad over the top but if you been at LANL or lived in New Mexico you will know that this kind of stuff goes on all the time. In fact some of my post was just some of the actual incidents that I remember. Remember whenLANL shipped Pu on an airplane that was a real doozy. From what I heard the manager in that was someone people had rarely seen, I head that you had to call a bar in Santa Fe to get hold of him. At one point when they where investigating what happened they called the bar and said you need to talk to us and he refused, the guys attitude was like "hey I am untouchable so buzz of" I think he was related to someone important in the area, I am not sure anyone was really fired in that case either. There all sorts of stories, including several where people ran private business out of their offices. One women in the Admin building had an office filled with shoes and would spend the whole day selling them as people came from all over the just to shop at here place. If you needed her she would say "not now I am in the middle of a sale". There is also the one where the guy managed a musical band from his office. The one with the guy who claimed to go to Livermore every week and and put in forged paper work for reinbursrment. (That is by the way we have so many rules to get reimbursed). The manager who would take his to mistresses to conferences and get reimbursements for her even though she had no reason to go. (This happed a couple of times). Heck even the deputy director was having here husband paid 10k for consolation fees for going to the Santa Fe Opera. It just goes on and on. Sure this stuff happens in other places but those other places do not make pits. The other thing is that in NM there is no sense of shame in doing this. In other words there is no moral repercussions for this. Sure you may lose your jobs but your friends and family will stand behind you no problem. They are not going to say to you "you should not have done that", they will just say it is unfair you got caught. Oh I have several relatives in NM and I know this attitude fairly well, which is one of the reasons I cannot stand it.
4/08/2021 8:33 AM is correct, and the problem is actually even worse at Sandia. Many top people have left there because they weren't related to anybody and didn't have a degree from the Harvard of New Mexico, a.k.a. UNM. Stanford, MIT, Princeton and Caltech are considered trade schools like ITT Tech at SNL. LDRD proposals at SNL actually have a whole section devoted to church, familial and UNM connections that would "qualify" the recipient to do the work. I had a manager who is married to a woman who works for a senator, who's name rhymes with Sandwich but starts with an H, who was one of these people for which the rules didn't seem to apply. Out of town people didn't stand a chance.
4/09/2021 5:43 AM
In many ways Sandia is seen as a success in terms of money being brought in. I cannot say much about how successful they are engineering tasks, however I can say that Sandia has fallen dramatically as scientific institute. This decline in Sandia has gone on for about 20 years so who knows the exact reason. In the 80s and 90s Sandia was considered one of primer science labs, not anymore. Several years ago someone had plot of the publication output at Sandia which as shown a significant decline. It also seems like a depressing place, 20 years ago it was still vibrant where people were excited about what they do, now the workforce is kinda gloomy and just view as just a job. This attitude has now exists in all the NNSA labs but seems to be much worse in Sandia.
4/08/2021 8:33 AM
Anecdotes that may or may not be true to support a general claim that is ridiculous. I was at LANL for 30 years and lived in NM for 40 years. I was in management and never heard of any of those "stories." Sure there were abuses, as in any large organization. But you are just throwing bombs for no reason except your own ego and resentment.
You start with "if you had been at LANL" and finish with "I have several relatives in NM and I know this attitude fairly well." You try to sound like you have first hand knowledge and then admit you don't. So you are just blowing smoke. And also racist smoke.
"and lived in NM for 40 years"
You claim that you have lived in NM for 40 years. If so you must know some statistics about crime and corruption in NM.
In the latest poll NM has now been found to be the most dangerous state in the US
https://www.roadsnacks.net/most-dangerous-states-in-america/
1. New MexicoPopulation: 2,096,829
Rank Last Year: 2 (Up 1)
Violent Crimes Per 100k: 832 (2nd worst)
Property Crimes Per 100k: 3,112 (2nd worst)
Believe it or not, but little New Mexico, one of the least densely populated places in the country, has the second highest crime rate in the nation. Why? The number of violent crimes per person is the 2nd highest and the number of property crimes is also one of the highest you’ll find in America by a long shot.
New Mexico has moved back and forth between the number 1 spot and number 2 spot
US News has crime only at 47 but 50 in terms of eduction.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico
Oh and crime has been getting worse in NM in the past 10 years.
https://www.santafegazette.com/new-mexico-crime-rate-is-higher-than-average/
https://www.abqjournal.com/1070918/at-a-glance-crime-in-albuquerque-and-new-mexico.html
Plenty of reports on New Mexico corruption
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/corruption-killing-new-mexico-s-economy/article_ec4aa148-195c-544c-9f5c-80d144f8e2a8.html
https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-new-mexico-ethics-dianna-duran.html
What I don't get is if you worked at LANL, and I am assuming as a technical person you must understand something about numbers and statistics. After 40 years you must have some idea of the issues in the state.
4/09/2021 9:54 PM
Try to stick to the subject under discussion.
"I was at LANL for 30 years and lived in NM for 40 years. I was in management and never heard of any of those "stories.""
I had posted a series of links to the news media covering several of these stories. I am not sure why they did not get posted I assumed that that they meet all the blog rules but so maybe I just messed up. Here are the links several of the stories you apparently never heard of.
The 10k for going to the Santa Fe Opera
https://www.abqjournal.com/364443/deputy-director-of-los-alamos-national-laboratory-resigns-over-conflict-of-interest-in-consulting-contract.html
The fraudulent travel claims
https://www.abqjournal.com/1136695/lanl-scientist-under-investigation-for-alleged-fraudulent-travel-claims.html
Copper theft
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/briefs/espa-ola-man-gets-probation-in-lanl-copper-theft/article_580b6f31-cfaf-5cff-9415-c465b80f3cd5.html
LANL coalition curroption
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/regional-coalition-of-lanl-communities-use-of-public-funds-flagged/article_b4f59a44-9440-595f-87fa-c64187479eca.html
Plutonium on airplanes
https://www.abqjournal.com/1121661/los-alamos-docked-3-1-million-for-shipping-plutonium-via-commercial-air-cargo.html
Also can you please back up your claim than any of this is racist? If you make such a claim you should be able to back it up.
Jeez, that stuff is really in the weeds when compared to the scope of LANL activities. Yeah, that level of theft and corruption happens in any large enterprise. Now compare that level of stuff to other large corporate entities comparable to LANL.
Alright back to watching livestreams of riots!!! It must be spring!!! For tonights viewing we have Minn, Kentucky, and Ca. Portland was the only city that provided service for the winter.
Ok what does this have to do with the labs? Well we left with the question of how to we deal with an increasingly divided nation. Most intuitions like academics and high tech have a mono culture but I would like to see how this plays out in the labs.
4/12/2021 10:56 PM
Tonights livestreamed riots are in Minn, Dallas, Sacramento and Columbus. Minn was a bit snowy so not as good as last night but things should be warmer on Wed night.
4/13/2021 10:21 PM
Fri, Sat and Sun night are the ones to look for in Min. A message needs to be sent. By the way not much happing in Chicago. Is there any way for the labs to show support, like not accepting anybody with a degree from Minnesota or Georgia, until they disband their police forces.
I've never quite understood why NNSA didn't just break off the Pit Production work from the LANL M&O contract, and set up a completely separate M&O contract for Pit Production in Los Alamos - similar to when Z Division was split from LANL to form Sandia Labs after World War II.
Also while SRS is a former/future production site and has that sort of production mindset culture, the over the road travel distant from SRS to Pantex does increase security/accident risk for moving Cat I SNM and Pits. I'm sure OST is more than capable of handling the convoys plus they have a sizable command base at Y-12 already. However it will add to OSTs workload which already has issues around federal convoy agent morale and work/life stress.
"I've never quite understood why NNSA didn't just break off the Pit Production work from the LANL M&O contract, and set up a completely separate M&O contract for Pit Production in Los Alamos - similar to when Z Division was split from LANL to form Sandia Labs after World War II. "
This makes the most sense for a lot of reasons. I can just envision when something goes wrong with a put the entire site will shut down for long periods of time with everyone doing glovebox safety. This can go the other way as well. It really should have separate management and separate contractors.
4/16/2021 1:23 PM
You raise issues that NNSA is not likely to try to deal with. To its detriment, and that of its contractors, until a major incident happens, when all the right heads will roll. And pit production in the interest of US national security will be shut down.
Fri, Sat and Sun night are the ones to look for in Min. A message needs to be sent. By the way not much happing in Chicago. Is there any way for the labs to show support, like not accepting anybody with a degree from Minnesota or Georgia, until they disband their police forces.
4/15/2021 9:03 PM
We have Chicago, DC and Minn tonight. I felt let down by Los Alamos so I went downtown to start yelling "Defund the Polic and BLM!. I had my big umbrella to protect against rubbers bullets and everything. I was hoping some people would join. It was a bit disappointing onlyone elderly women came by and and asked where the mail boxes where. Sigh.
4/16/2021 1:23 PM
OST already has to go to SRS for other products. This would not be a change.
SRS is not a former production site. It is a current production site. Ask WETF.
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