Experts said this week that a fire sparked by an earthquake beneath the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico could let loose a cloud of potentially lethal plutonium, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, May 15).
There are "major" safety issues at Los Alamos that require "both immediate and long-term actions," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board stated in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Engineers have found that a fault line below the nuclear-weapon site could produce a significantly more powerful ground disturbance than previously thought possible. Above this fault are possibly thousands of pounds of plutonium at the TA-55 complex.
The U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Safety Administration, which manages Los Alamos, is "evaluating the board's recommendation and preparing a formal response," a spokeswoman said. New safety actions have been put in place in recent years at the site, according to the agency.
The laboratory is considering relocating some of the plutonium out of TA-55, an expensive and intricate process, said Peter Stockton, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight.
The board focused on the potential for an earthquake to knock over "glove boxes" used for safe handling of radioactive materials. Los Alamos had hundreds of glove boxes, some of which house furnaces that are used to shape plutonium. Were those furnaces running during an earthquake, the safety board warned that an uncontainable blaze could start that would vaporize all of the plutonium, making it airborne.
In a worst-case situation, an earthquake-induced fire could set free enough plutonium that a person on the perimeter of the facility would receive a lethal dose of radiation. Located close to the laboratory are an American Indian reservation and a trailer court.
The nuclear agency said it had already signed off on a new study that called for further safety measures at Los Alamos but said that the site was protected against existing threats, the Times reported. That study, though, did call for consideration of "all the relevant hazards of a seismic event."
Several fire-safety improvements to Los Alamos have been finished this year that include putting in place higher-temperature ventilation filters as well as more hand-operated fire extinguishers. Plutonium has also been moved into more durable boxes.
"Protecting the health and safety of our employees, the public and the environment while conducting operations all across the laboratory ... is our primary concern," Los Alamos said (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 28).