The prime contractor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is being investigated for an April incident in which radioactive contamination from the nuclear weapons lab was found on and off-site.
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Enterprise Assessments announced its intent to investigate Lawrence Livermore National Security on Jan. 26. Anthony Pierpoint, director of the Office of Enforcement within the Office of Enterprise Assessments informed Laboratory Director and President Kimberly Budil in a letter dated Jan. 24.
The contamination did not originate from Livermore, an NNSA spokesperson wrote in an email this week, and it was not limited to Livermore personnel. Some of a group of more than a dozen people had some internal contamination, or uptake, but it was “well below levels of any clinical concern,” the spokesperson said.
The Enterprise Assessments letter calls for an investigation into the “March 2023 loss of contamination control and the discovery of contaminated property both on and offsite, including at a Lawrence Livermore National Security worker’s residence, on April 8, 2023.”
“Although investigating the loss of contamination control and offsite discovery of contaminated property will be the general purpose of this investigation, additional issues relating to the scope, nature, and extent of compliance with DOE’s nuclear safety requirements … procedural rules for [Department of Energy] Nuclear Activities may be pursued as issues arise during the course of the investigation,” Pierpoint wrote.
The investigation will include an onsite visit and interviews with contractor personnel.
“A multi-laboratory team was exposed to small amounts of iodine-125 during an international site visit in March 2023,” an NNSA spokesperson wrote in an email this week.
The team included 13 members from NNSA Headquarters, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Savannah River National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the spokesperson wrote.
“Upon returning to the United States, technical experts working with the traveling team raised concern of potential radioactive iodine exposure. All team members were tested for exposure. Results for some of them showed a detectable uptake of I-125, but at levels well below regulatory and administrative limits, and well below levels of any clinical concern,” the NNSA spokesperson said.
