Los Alamos National Laboratory management has been put on notice after a series of safety violations two years ago sent red flags all the way up to National Nuclear Security Administration leadership.
Triad National Security, led by Battelle Memorial Institute, The Texas A&M University System and the University of California, violated Department of Energy safety requirements in at least four separate incidents at Los Alamos National Lab’s (LANL) PF-4 Plutonium Facility between February and July 2021, according to a preliminary notice of violation the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments issued on May 24.
Four events, all of which occurred in 2021, prompted the notice of violation. They include fissionable material being placed in an unsafe area in February of that year, and a glove breach in which three workers’ skin was contaminated with radiation in March 2021, according to a May 18 letter from NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby to Thomas Mason, Triad National Security’s LANL director. LANL has had several spates of glovebox breaches in recent years, some of which are connected with equipment supplied by Red Wing, Minn.-based Central Research Laboratories.
Triad operates LANL on behalf of the NNSA under an $11 billion contract that last year was extended until October 2028.
A flooding event, also in March of that year, occurred in a vault containing fissionable material and in July another flood occurred when a water tank for the wet vacuum system in PF-4 overflowed into the negative pressure system chilled cooling water tank and then into the glovebox ventilation system that services multiple rooms and gloveboxes containing fissionable material, the notice said.
“The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) considers this series of nuclear safety events to be serious and to have high safety significance,” Hruby wrote. “These events revealed deficiencies in … work processes, management processes, quality improvement and criticality safety requirements.”
After evaluating the evidence from the series of safety infractions, NNSA determined that Triad violated at least five enforceable requirements. The agency already withheld $1.4 million of Triad’s contract fee for fiscal year 2021, “in part for deficiencies related to the events,” Hruby said. The NNSA did propose civil penalties for the violations.
Triad has 30 days to submit a written reply to the notice of violation or NNSA can pursue a default order against the company. Triad also could stop any enforcement actions by waiving any right to contest the notice of violation.
