The Los Alamos National Laboratory called a two-day time out on some of its plutonium work late last month after personnel put fissile material in the wrong containers, according to a report released April 27 by an independent federal nuclear-safety watchdog.
Both mishaps took place in March at the New Mexico lab’s Plutonium Facility. During the week of March 23, personnel placed a fissile nuclear-weapon core known as a plutonium pit into a glove box that was not approved to hold the item. On March 1, personnel placed “several samples” of “fissile material” in a hemishell where they were not allowed.
After the glove-box incident, lab management decided to pause all “operations involving special nuclear materials” at the Plutonium Facility, according to the report, dated March 30, from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
A lab spokesperson said the pause ran March 27-28, and that this response to the incidents in the Plutonium Facility “are not slowing down our pit operations in any meaningful way.”
The infractions involved four workers and one manager, who during the pause completed a safety review “to review requirements, identify best practices and identify areas where clarity can be further improved,” the lab spokesperson wrote Friday in an email.
Both March mishandlings violated Los Alamos’ criticality safety rules, which are intended to prevent an accidental nuclear chain-reaction. The last such accident at Los Alamos occurred in 1958.
