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A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

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Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#31

Post by dralley »

anonu wrote: post #15

Today I learned: don't bring radioactive material close together... I know about criticality. But I always thought you needed a conventional explosive to kickstart the chain reaction.

It's not necessary. You just need to increase the neutron density to a point where the fission reaction can take place. You can do that by:

* Reflecting neutrons (as in the demon core incidents)

* Bringing too much fissile material together in the same place (the cause of other accidents, the "little boy" nuclear weapon)

* Compressing a subcritical mass of fissile material with explosives such that the increased density makes it critical (most nuclear weapons)

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#32

Post by borski »

ars wrote: post #16
heavyset_go wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you continued to read the article, you'd see that there was a culture of throwing caution to the wind to increase productivity at not only that lab, but other nuclear facilities around the world. Hell, the article even went on to say that workers at the facility even came up with a euphemism for orders that ignored basic safety protocols, they called them "Bubba said" orders. And the article said that after those…

> And the article said that after those criticality events, those in charge of the facility and safety of personnel just had people keep working instead of evacuating. And how exactly did they convince those employees to keep working? The employees are not making extra for not following rules, do people really just not care about their lives? (I don't for a second believe someone working in a nuclear lab would be una…

I didn’t for a second believe someone working in a nuclear lab would have brought together that many high purity plutonium rods in close proximity, but apparently I was wrong.

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#33

Post by toss1 »

bitL wrote: post #24
ineedasername wrote: post #10

I would have though the decision tree for placement of concentrated plutonium was firmly established after the demon core incidents, set roughly in stone as the following: Should I bring high purity plutonium samples together? | V Do you want to die a horrible radiated death taught in textbooks for decades? | | V V No. Yes | | V V Then don’t you’re fired. It seems like Los Alamos may be in need of a fresh printout of…

Fired or fried?

plausibly both

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#34

Post by ars »

CobaltFire wrote: post #5

Putting a profit motive anywhere near anything that is safety critical is almost never a good idea. Naval Nuclear Power has it's issues, yet it is so safe that we have almost no incidents. That's because things like this don't happen there due to the culture of safety. That said, this is about production rather than operation, but the overall communities are relatively small and aligned.

The safety issues pre-dated any profit motive:

"In 2005, shortly before the profit-making firms wrested majority control of the laboratory from the University of California, the lab's "nuclear criticality safety program did not meet many of the" nuclear industry's standards, according to a DOE report in 2008."

The lab just doesn't have a culture of safety, it has nothing to do with profit. The profit motive was mentioned in the Japanese lab, not Los Alamos.

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#35

Post by ars »

heavyset_go wrote: post #9
wisnoskij wrote: post #7

They keep saying that profit seeking was the issue, but taking selfies with plutonium, running a lab for 4 years that produces nothing, and not having any employees that don't understand the most basics of nuclear physics does not sound like profit seeking. It sounds like someone just has way too much money and runs a nuclear weapons lab as vanity project.

If you continued to read the article, you'd see that there was a culture of throwing caution to the wind to increase productivity at not only that lab, but other nuclear facilities around the world. Hell, the article even went on to say that workers at the facility even came up with a euphemism for orders that ignored basic safety protocols, they called them "Bubba said" orders. And the article said that after those…

> other nuclear facilities ... "Bubba said" orders

Right, those Bubba said order are from a different lab, not the "profit motive" Los Alamos one.

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

ars wrote: post #16
heavyset_go wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you continued to read the article, you'd see that there was a culture of throwing caution to the wind to increase productivity at not only that lab, but other nuclear facilities around the world. Hell, the article even went on to say that workers at the facility even came up with a euphemism for orders that ignored basic safety protocols, they called them "Bubba said" orders. And the article said that after those…

> And the article said that after those criticality events, those in charge of the facility and safety of personnel just had people keep working instead of evacuating. And how exactly did they convince those employees to keep working? The employees are not making extra for not following rules, do people really just not care about their lives? (I don't for a second believe someone working in a nuclear lab would be una…

[deleted]

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#37

Post by gs17 »

eru wrote: post #30
_dain_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't that the film MI6 based their fake iraq WMDs dossier on

'The Rock' came out in 1996. Which dossier are you talking about?

2002 according to https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/it-was-such-obv...

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#38

Post by jonstewart »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #2

Some people say suicide is never justified, but I don't believe people who say such things comprehend the horrors of acute radiation poisoning.

That was my reaction reading about the accident in Japan. Anyone who gets a guaranteed lethal dose of radiation like that should be given a large mercy dose of morphine to kill them so they don't have to endure their skin falling off. It seems inhumane to keep someone on life support in such cases.

Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)

#40

Post by MichaelCollins »

> Virtually all of the Los Alamos engineers tasked with keeping workers safe from criticality incidents decided to quit, having become frustrated by the sloppy work demonstrated by the 2011 event and what they considered the lab management's callousness about nuclear risks and its desire to put its own profits above safety.

> When this exodus was in turn noticed in Washington, officials there concluded the privately-run lab was not adequately protecting its workers from a radiation disaster.

Excellent response from those engineers.

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