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

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

#151

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:35 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #118

code_duck wrote: post #49

My favorite nuclear disaster! Criticality events. I lived in Los Alamos for a while. I looked into renting a studio space. I became curious about the property across the street from my prospective rental which was surrounded by a chain link fence with green canvas. I researched and learned it was the site of an original Manhattan site waste dump which had, a few years prior, been enclosed with a negative pressure ten…

Where I am, developments are constantly built on old landfill, including landfill used for industrial waste. People buy in and then are shocked 5-10 years down the line when they find out their soil is contaminated and they can't eat what they grow in their gardens. That, and the developments that get built near Superfund sites or old industrial sites. Most of a nearby town's residential areas were built on property…

There is a development on treasure island in the sf bay in which your not even technically supposed to dig in your yard at all, for any reason, or risk being exposed to too much of whatever they left there.

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

#152

Post by jackvalentine » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

bumby wrote: post #77

BurningFrog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. Also: “The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

Counterpoint is that it's easy to dismiss a requirement when one doesn't fully understand it. Sometimes that takes less work to dismiss it rather than spending the effort to remove one's ignorance. Particularly in safety critical systems, it's probably prudent to assume there is a good intent first.

A classic one for home food preserving - some of the old recipes have steps that ‘don’t make sense’ but are crucial to food safety. Without them you might get botulism.

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

#153

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

maybelsyrup wrote: post #131

> undermined the nation's ability to fabricate the cores of new nuclear weapons Uh, good.

Yeah, it seems like we don't deserve this anymore. We can't even follow simple safety rules with the raw stuff, how do we expect we can be responsible with the weapons themselves?

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

#154

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

bmc7505 wrote: post #60

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…

Your flowchart neglects to mention the potential upside: Do you want to experience the results of runaway nuclear chain reaction firsthand? Become a Wikipedia entry? Impress the labmates with your prowess at tickling the dragon's tail?

Do your job? Is "warhead core built following elementary safety standards" the nuclear version of "seven mutually perpendicular red lines drawn on a 2d page with green ink"?

> Los Alamos's managers still have not figured out a way to fully meet the most elemental nuclear safety standards

> it hasn't produced a usable new warhead core in at least six years

I want to believe that the situation is as simple as replacing some stubborn lab managers and putting a new training program in place, but who the hell shuts down operations for six years just to preserve the bro culture? I don't buy it. Bureaucracies demand contradictions all the time, though, and they never run out of surprise at the real world's failure to abide by their contradictory requirements.

> PF-4 is also the only place where existing cores removed randomly from the arsenal can be painstakingly tested

The fact that the lab has unique duties presents a unique opportunity for such a tangle to happen.

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

#155

Post by dmwood » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:45 AM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #105

code_duck wrote: post #49

My favorite nuclear disaster! Criticality events. I lived in Los Alamos for a while. I looked into renting a studio space. I became curious about the property across the street from my prospective rental which was surrounded by a chain link fence with green canvas. I researched and learned it was the site of an original Manhattan site waste dump which had, a few years prior, been enclosed with a negative pressure ten…

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.

Pu in soil within the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge contributes (NIST soil standard data) about 0.8% of total soil radioactivity. Remembering that 239Pu emits almost no gamma rays, it's no surprise that annual doses from soil inhalation plus ingestion give 50 year doses of less than 0.1 milliSievert. By contrast, ANNUAL doses from background radiation around RF are about 1850 times larger, and a chest X-ray is about 25 milliSieverts. Scope out rockyflatsneighbors.org for actual reliable Rocky Flats data. Former Rocky Flats workers contributed more than any other non-Soviet group to knowledge of biological effects of Pu on humans.

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

#156

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:45 AM UTC

hit8run wrote: post #43

Maybe just stop building nuclear weapons!? The last thing the world needs is more of this shit.

At the very least it seems like we don't deserve them anymore. We can't even follow simple safety procedures to keep thr raw plutonium safe, how do we expect we can be safe with the warheads?

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

#157

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC

defrost wrote: post #150

iancmceachern wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with it is captured in this quote from the website candelisglows.com: "The area is an industrial nuclear waste site, not a nature preserve. If you want to learn about prairies and wildlife, there are plenty of other non-contaminated areas in Colorado to visit and learn." My opinion is that they are intentionally deceiving the unwitting public when they call a place like this a nature preserve and put trails…

Call it what it is, sure .. but why "fence it off"? The surface layers down for a few feet are highly unlikely to have any waste (assuming the US can do a rehab properly) and the actual radiation risk is likely to be far far less than hiking in totally "natural" granite ridges where radon gases pool daily until breezes clear them out.

Why not? Why do we need people going there? There is so much empty space in Colorado, just go anywhere else.

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

#158

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #149

kortex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, if you ever want to locate sketchy sites, the keyword is "Wildlife Management Area". Odds are pretty good it's going to be some former superfund, government, chemical, or industrial cleanup site. They do their best to clean up what they can and then declare it a nature preserve. E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quehanna_Wild_Area

It's nuts that this is a legal practice. It's intentionally deceptive to the general public and also removes peoples right to avoid exposure to bad stuff in bad places. There should be some kind of law passed that at least forces these places to be labeled what they really are. This quote about the former Rocky Flats that has become a nature preserve sums it up: "The area is an industrial nuclear waste site, not a na…

It's a nuanced question, given the fact that toxicity depends on many characteristics: method of exposure, dose to body weight, bioaccumulation, etc.

For a substance that needs to be ingested in high doses for an average human (even a small child) over an extended period of time, what's the harm of having a contaminated park?

You have relatively infrequent exposure, and you likely don't eat / drink from the area. That's a helluva lot safer than living in a "less-polluted" industrial site, but where you could build up toxic exposure over time.

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

#159

Post by defrost » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #157

defrost wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it what it is, sure .. but why "fence it off"? The surface layers down for a few feet are highly unlikely to have any waste (assuming the US can do a rehab properly) and the actual radiation risk is likely to be far far less than hiking in totally "natural" granite ridges where radon gases pool daily until breezes clear them out.

Why not? Why do we need people going there? There is so much empty space in Colorado, just go anywhere else.

Your criteria for fencing an area off appears to based upon radiation hazard.

I take it then you are also in favour of fencing off all the red areas in the USofA radon risk map also?

It would seem to be inconsistent if you were not in favour.

https://www.nationalradondefense.com/radon-information/radon...

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

#160

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Oct 03, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #151

heavyset_go wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I am, developments are constantly built on old landfill, including landfill used for industrial waste. People buy in and then are shocked 5-10 years down the line when they find out their soil is contaminated and they can't eat what they grow in their gardens. That, and the developments that get built near Superfund sites or old industrial sites. Most of a nearby town's residential areas were built on property…

There is a development on treasure island in the sf bay in which your not even technically supposed to dig in your yard at all, for any reason, or risk being exposed to too much of whatever they left there.

"Whatever they left there" is the most terrifying part of a lot of these long term sites.

Without documentation, and as GP mentioned, you can scour the site as much as you want... and easily miss a single buried barrel of god-knows-what, that only the guy who tossed it off the truck knows was there (if even they knew), until it finally rusts through or is punctured.

Ironically, leaking or unsealed waste sites are probably safer, because it pervades the environment, is more easily detectable, and doesn't have sudden failure modes.