> undermined the nation's ability to fabricate the cores of new nuclear weapons
Uh, good.
A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
131–140 of 254 posts
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like the same story as Rocky Flats west of Denver. Same thing, after "Cleanup" it's a (still radioactive) nature preserve and housing development now.
Do you have evidence of this? I’ve looked into Rocky Flats specifically because I live in the area, and I can’t find any evidence that radiation levels are dangerous.
I was about to mention Rocky Flats. It’s very easy to find the published evidence. This is from the EPA and mentions what was not cleaned up (of course that says it is safe):
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...
But I would not believe that’s full disclosure. The EPA has a vested interest in finalizing superfund cleanups successfully. As far as I know, there is no oversight or third party auditing.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right, but eyeballs want to peek at plutonium and secretly want to see the stuff glow as green rods.
I admit it's alluring. It's just a chunk of greyish metal, how dangerous could it be? Radioactivity is already a mysterious and fascinating and alluring phenomenon, and somehow radioactive things not looking particularly dangerous only adds to that effect. There's something strange about ionizing radiation: it's extremely dangerous, yet we have never evolved the ability to detect it and have no intuition for it.
> never evolved the ability to detect it
How much of a problem was it before we started mining uranium and putting it into glass? That was only 100-200 years ago, I think?
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not sarcastic. I do think the Pu risks are overblown, and I think the numbers I've posted in this thread back that up sufficiently that I don't see how anyone could disagree. Can you explain further?
Remember, in the US it is a codified right to have a safe workplace. Meaning, employers have a legal responsibility to ensure risks to employee health are properly mitigated. The article demonstrates a culture a LALN that doesn’t seem to do so, while the other DOE sites seem to do a better job.
I don't think that LANL or any other DoE site approaches the level of risk of steel mills, farms, garbage trucks, and as you pointed out, construction sites. If there are people willing to undertake such risks to life and limb to grow food or collect garbage, why not to produce nuclear fuel?
Of course it is important that those risks are within their control, not imposed on them by mismanagement or lack of information.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean no, it's completely correct. Criticality happens when there's enough plutonium in a small enough space (or not enough plutonium, but in a space with a high density of neutron reflectors). The demon core incident(s), the Cecil Kelley criticality incident, and others don't involve explosives. Just read through the wikipedia list[0], and you'll see that causes included dropping a tungsten brick, an unexpected poo…
Those examples, especially the Demon Core, had much higher quantities of plutonium. The Demon Core [1] was a sphere of 6.2 kg of plutonium surrounded by neutron reflecting tungsten carbide. The photo in this article shows a few small sticks of plutonium. They are not in contact with each other. They are not surrounded by neutron reflecting materials. The chance of criticality in that configuration was insignificant.…
I think you're at least somewhat underestimating the quantity of plutonium in those pictures, plutonium is dense enough that there's likely more Pu in that photo than in a modern nuclear warhead.
For context, modern warheads use 3kg, much less than the demon core, and the pit that you link to the guy holding is likely a hollow shell of plutonium that is then covered in steel or beryllium. The pit itself is usually ~5cm, but would be closer to 3cm if it were solid Pu.
Like, assuming that the sharpie in the controversial image is a normal one, each of the top row cylinders are approximately 6 inches long and 1 inch diameter cylinders, meaning that the top cylinders are each 1.5kg of Pu, so that image probably has like 10kg+ of Pu, almost double what was in the demon core and 3-4x what's in a modern warhead (and I think I'm generally being conservative in those estimates, so it could well be closer to 15kg!)
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember, in the US it is a codified right to have a safe workplace. Meaning, employers have a legal responsibility to ensure risks to employee health are properly mitigated. The article demonstrates a culture a LALN that doesn’t seem to do so, while the other DOE sites seem to do a better job.
I don't think that LANL or any other DoE site approaches the level of risk of steel mills, farms, garbage trucks, and as you pointed out, construction sites. If there are people willing to undertake such risks to life and limb to grow food or collect garbage, why not to produce nuclear fuel? Of course it is important that those risks are within their control , not imposed on them by mismanagement or lack of informati…
I don't disagree that, in general, the risk is lower than many other jobs. But that missed the point. It also doesn't mean it would be okay for teachers to have an unsafe work environment, as long as it's safer than a steel mill. Those comparisons are poor measures because it's about mitigating the risk to a reasonable level. In the context of the article, risking a criticality event is not a reasonable level.
Whether or not anyone is willing to take on additional risk also misses the point. Suppose I find people who are willing to live on an aquifer that is polluted by industrial waste because it's cheap land. Does that fact make it okay for the factory in your local area to disregard EPA regulations? I say no, because you have a codified right to certain standards of clean water. It's the same with safe job sites. You'll be able to find people on construction sites willing to work unsafe conditions; that doesn't alleviate their employer from legal responsibility.
What the article is demonstrating is the inability of LANL to implement the proper mitigations, whether those are engineered, administrative, or protective equipment.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that LANL or any other DoE site approaches the level of risk of steel mills, farms, garbage trucks, and as you pointed out, construction sites. If there are people willing to undertake such risks to life and limb to grow food or collect garbage, why not to produce nuclear fuel? Of course it is important that those risks are within their control , not imposed on them by mismanagement or lack of informati…
I don't disagree that, in general, the risk is lower than many other jobs. But that missed the point. It also doesn't mean it would be okay for teachers to have an unsafe work environment, as long as it's safer than a steel mill. Those comparisons are poor measures because it's about mitigating the risk to a reasonable level. In the context of the article, risking a criticality event is not a reasonable level. Whethe…
LANL has had three criticality accidents in 80 years, which have killed three people, two of them during WWII (after which things presumably improved) and the third in 01958. That's out of what is now 12000 people, which would lead you to expect about 40 deaths over that period of time, though presumably the workforce size has fluctuated over the years (but it was about 10000 by the end of 01946). I think that by any standard that's a reasonable level of risk.
I don't hold with any of this "codified right" nonsense. What's right and wrong determines what the laws should be; the laws can't determine what's right and what's wrong. We have to determine what's right and what's wrong independently of the laws in order to figure out how they should be changed. Factories poisoning people was wrong before the EPA existed, is still wrong where the EPA doesn't have jurisdiction, and would still be wrong if the EPA allowed it.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#138God, nukes and everything about them is terrifying. I'm sure people working at plants that make conventional explosives aren't exposed to such risks, not even close. I think that we lack the technology to make such things safely. It's unfortunate that robotics is such a failed science, because no one should be handling anything remotely close to criticality with rubber gloves. It's 2022 but when it comes to our ability to protect against nuclear accidents it's still 1942.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a scientist wanted to commit suicide, couldn’t he trigger the criticality event just to see what it’s like and then promptly kill himself off afterward before radiation effects set in? Or is the agony instant?
While radiation isn't a poison, in this case it's similar enough: the higher the dose, the more likely (or faster) the death. But you might raise some red flags if your workplace notices you doing calculations to calculate criticality experiments next to calculations of human radiation dose levels and lethality.
In this specific case, I highly doubt there were any calculations involved. The fact that it seems there were many people involved in setting up this stupid photo makes me believe even less in the future of humanity. I mean, it's Homer Simpson levels of nuclear handling irresponsibility.
Re: A near-disaster at a nuclear weapons lab takes toll on America’s arsenal (2017)
#140>... tested to see if they remain safe and reliable for use in the nuclear stockpile.
Note here this expression "safe and reliable", taken from the DoE's founding legislation, is officially re-interpreted to be very, very different from what a normal person would conclude.
Most particularly, "safety" doesn't mean anything about risks to the public or to people handling equipment and materials. It does not mean anything about them not exploding in their warehouse or while hanging in a bomber. It does not mean protecting against release of radioactive materials or contamination of groundwater or ecosystems.
It does not mean keeping people from stealing plutonium or whole weapons. It does not mean keeping bombs from falling out of planes at random (which has happened), or from crews setting them off accidentally or on purpose. It does not mean keeping bombers loaded with them from crashing or missiles with them on top from exploding in their silos (which have both happened).
The only responsibility "safety" places on the DoE is ensuring that, when the button is pushed, the bomb really does go boom.
"Reliability", meanwhile, means only that the boom is as big as it says in the specs.
It probably requires legislation to change these re-interpretations.