We all remember the recent spate of nuclear commanders being relieved by the US military. But it seems bad leadership and/or stupidity isn’t limited to the military’s nuclear community these days.
Back in February, there were two incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) – an underground facility in a salt beds near Carlsbad, NM, that’s 2000’ below the earth’s surface. It was built as a place for long-term storage of the nation’s nuclear weapons-related nuclear waste.
One of those incidents was a truck fire. OK, sometimes stuff happens.
However, the other was a radiation leak. So, how did that leak happen?
Well, it turns out that someone used the wrong kind of cat litter when preparing a batch of highly acidic nuclear weapons waste for storage at the WIPP. Rather than clay-based litter, wheat-based litter was used.
Seriously.
It turns out that this created a mixture that was quite volatile – it has been called “akin to plastic explosives”. After arrival at the WIPP, one such drum cracked open. Twenty workers received radiation exposure (of a low level, thankfully). The facility will require extensive work (to the tune of $500M) for decontamination and substantial time (estimates by the contractor operating the WIPP are 3 years, minimum) before resuming operations.
So, the WIPP contractor eats it, right? After all, their guys screwed up and used the wrong stuff?
Well, not exactly. It seems that Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) – not the contractor – prepared the drum of waste for shipment to the WIPP. It turns out LANL’s supporting contractor, Los Alamos National Security LLC, was working in haste to meet a deadline for preparing Cold War waste for shipment that would give them a “leg up” in contract renewal negotiations. An internal investigation conducted at LANL blamed the error on “a typo in a policy manual”. It’s unclear whether that policy manual was prepared by LANL government or contractor personnel.
Four managers – apparently on the contractor side – were reportedly replaced at LANL since the incident. Whether this will have any effect on that contractor’s contract renewal is at this point unclear.
Some details of the WIPP and the original accident can be found here. An explanation for the errors leading up to the mistake causing the leakage incident can be found here. (Unfortunately, this is the short version; the longer version with more details is behind a pay wall.)
So, folks – no, it’s not just the military’s nuclear community that has its “sh!t in the wind” these days. Looks like the rest of the Nuclear Kingdom has its share of problems too.
