LANL DIRECTOR SUGGESTS PU WORK AT LAB RESTARTING IN PHASES

Almost a month after pausing Plutonium Facility operations, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan said the lab has started restarting work at the facility in phases. “I assume we’re going to be resuming in phases,” he said in a telephone interview with NW&M Monitor. “Where we’re in better shape, we’ll do those first and by programmatic priorities.” Many operations, like non-DOE Work For Others, have continued without interruption. McMillan said work in some areas, like on Plutonium 238, which is mostly used for power sources like the Mars Rover, was expected to be easier and has resumed. “After six weeks of review, we found that processes couldn’t be executed as written,” McMillan said. Some operations were not performed in the correct order, so the question was did it have to be in that order. At the same time, he said, “We don’t want to tell workers to do it one way and not do it.” Asked about the trade-off between budget and safety, McMillan said, “We are going to operate PF-4 safely. End of story.”