Nuclear labsDeficiencies in U.S. nuclear labs’ emergency preparedness plans: Report

A recently released study of seventeen U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), which examined operations at the labs over the last three years, found deficiencies in emergency preparedness plans. Three New Mexico labs — the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque — exemplify various gaps in disaster preparedness throughout the nation’s nuclear defense system.

The assessment comes as the Energy and Defense Department are looking to increase production of nuclear weapons components at LANL and Sandia.

“We’re confident we can do it. This is a fairly big increase in production, and Sandia is aware it’s a big increase,” Sandia spokesman Jim Danneskiold said in response to plans to increase production of neutron generators at Sandia by 50 percent from 600 last year to 900 per year within two years. LANL is also preparing to increase production of its plutonium pits — small nuclear bombs that trigger full-scale weapons, to eighty pits annually within fifteen years (since the cold war ended, no more than eleven pits have been built in a single year).

Recent incidents, however, have raised questions about the Energy Department’s (DOE) ability safely to handle expansion plans. In February, a drum containing radioactive waste from LANL exploded in an underground storage site at WIPP. The incident exposed about twenty workers to radiation and forced the shutdown of waste processing in the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository. A truck fire was reported at the facility just days before the incident.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the DNFSB report, released on 2 September, is the first of its kind in fifteen years, and was prepared partly to test emergency preparedness at U.S. nuclear facilities after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. “DOE has not comprehensively and consistently demonstrated its ability to protect the worker and the public in the event of an emergency,” the report said. The deficiencies were “clearly evidenced by the truck fire and radioactive material release events at WIPP.”

An April report by DOE’s Accident Investigation Board, in response to the February radiation leak, documented a list of emergency readiness failures at WIPP. Investigators concluded that WIPP personnel failed to acknowledge the first signs of the radiation leak; and response to the leak was inefficient due to inadequate safety training and emergency planning, and lax DOE oversight throughout the initial reaction period of the incident. “Many of the site-specific issues noted at WIPP are prevalent at other sites with defense nuclear facilities,” the DNFSB report said.

The report points out that emergency planners at LANL faulted by only establishing response plans based on worst-case scenarios, thereby leaving the staff unprepared for less catastrophic but dangerous circumstances. “When decision makers know that the release is less severe than the worst case accident, they may be reluctant to implement conservative protection actions, particularly those that involve the public,” the report said.

Oversight of contractors’ emergency preparedness plans also proved to be weak at some of the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities. “Based on its review of numerous contractor assessment reports, the staff team observed that many of the assessments were not effective at identifying problems and weaknesses with their programs,” the report said. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has pledged to fix deficiencies outlined in the report. “DOE agrees that actions are needed to improve emergency preparedness and response capabilities at its defense nuclear facilities,” Moniz wrote in a letter to the safety board.