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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)

#181

Post by redanddead »

eru wrote: post #57
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to do a direct comparison as government jobs tend to inherently be more risky and accident reporting rates vary. An Air Force pilot isn’t directly analogous to an airline pilot nor is a police officer even vaguely equivalent to private security. Private sector hospitals, which are arguably the closest direct analog with public sector counterparts, have higher rates of workplace injury than public sector hos…

Thanks. I was more thinking of industrial accidents, for example. In any case, when given the right incentives, profit seeking companies are excellent at promoting safety. Similarly, bureaucrats working for organisations without a profit-motive don't magically follow the same preferences we might dream up in our armchairs. They also need to be given the right incentives.

give examples, I'm really not convinced.

If anything public sector industries are far far larger in terms of scale, so it's likely that 1 single public disaster trumps many private ones. However, private sector has shown time and time again that it can create huge issues, for example take the forever chemicals inside you right now that you didn't consent to having inside you.

I want to believe private and corporate is better. It's hard for me.

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

#182

Post by redanddead »

_dain_ wrote: post #14
gonzo41 wrote: post #11

There's a great Nicholas cage quote from the movie 'The Rock' where he's handling VX nerve gas and looks Sean Connery in the face and says "The second you don't respect this, it kills you". Which pretty much holds true for handling enriched nuclear material. Kind or terrifying.

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

That's insane. What happened in the 2000s? It's like people are just waking up from a bad hangover

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

#183

Post by arethuza »

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.

A good book about the history of Rocky Flats:

https://unmpress.com/books/making-real-killing/9780826327987

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

#184

Post by drawingthesun »

Why is the only lab that can make new cores for America's nukes privately owned?

Honestly this is utter madness.

Surely one of the most critical core components of America's entire nuclear deterrent should be government owned and run?

What am I missing?

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

#185

Post by sbierwagen »

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…

Ah, the SEC approach to a problem. Require more disclosure, change the name to something scarier, but don’t fix anything.

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

#186

Post by sbierwagen »

rdtwo wrote: post #54
bumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted but this is a very prevalent attitude at hazardous facilities that are run by contractors. In particular, when the hazards are relatively low probability events and there are perverse incentives to roll the dice in the name of productivity. In a previous job in a hazardous facility, I’ve had very senior managers sit me down to tell me I don’t want to get the reputation for slowi…

I think this is universal. The safety rules go so overboard that the critical ones get ignored with the stupid ones because employees don’t know which ones are the important ones. If everything is critical nothing is

My first job out of highschool: overnight loader/stocker at a hardware store.

The guy who ran the big forklift in the lumber section was a bit of a cowboy. At the start of the night there would be a big pile of lumber, and he had to sort it and get it on the shelves. We couldn’t really run two lifts at the same time due to aisle width, so he did the job solo, and ran the equipment fast to get it done in time.

Start of shift one evening an upper manager came down and said they reviewed security camera footage, that he was driving too fast, and needed to be more careful. But how do I get it done in time, he said? She emitted the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and left.

Because, of course, she doesn’t want him to be slower, she wanted him to be more careful. To be on record as having issued a warning, so that if something happened, her ass would be covered. She couldn’t solve the problem but she could certainly apportion blame beforehand.

A formative experience for 19 year old me.

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

#187

Post by thrown_22 »

bboygravity wrote: post #146
thrown_22 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very gung ho culture in labs about safety. It slows you down to do things right and when it comes to reviews the cowboys (and girls) who do things wrong but fast get better reviews because they get more done. Nuclear labs kill the people inside them at worst. Bio labs ... Well there's a reason why I think covid was the worst lab accident in human history.

> Well there's a reason why I think covid was the worst lab accident in human history. And that reason likely has to do more with the fact that you're not a virologist nor someone who has a deep understanding of virus evolution and how Sars-CoV2 does what it does.

If there's a big explosion in Los Alamos I'm going to think it's a nuclear explosion even if everyone else says it's a meteor. Balance of probability is that the biological weapons lab was doing biological weapons research and it got out.

Without a non virologist investigating what happened there this is the same level of believability as cops clearing themselves of wrong doing in an afternoon.

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

#188

Post by logifail »

ethbr0 wrote: post #158
iancmceachern wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Tha…

> 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

Based on my experiences with how our children behave when they're playing in parks, I much prefer the thought of parks not being contaminated!

Small kids typically come home from parks dirty. Heck, small kids come away from pretty much anything dirty :)

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

#189

Post by BlueTemplar »

justinator wrote: post #63
bumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted but this is a very prevalent attitude at hazardous facilities that are run by contractors. In particular, when the hazards are relatively low probability events and there are perverse incentives to roll the dice in the name of productivity. In a previous job in a hazardous facility, I’ve had very senior managers sit me down to tell me I don’t want to get the reputation for slowi…

> I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted Because "Covid 19 was engineered in a lab, then released" is nothing but a conspiracy theory.

That the governments have tried to make appear the theory of a lab leak, contrary to expert opinion, as "exceedingly unlikely" is now a conspiracy fact, not theory.

If you want some theory, then : The Wuhan Virology Institute database has been taken offline in September 2019. And investment was made in aeration systems. French intelligence agencies have been mandated to investigate in autumn 2019. (The October 2019 Wuhan military sports games would have been a good occasion.) Then, in January 2020, the passengers list for a military plane from Wuhan to France didn't match.

Those are facts too, the theory part is the way I put them together. (Could have been a coincidence of course.)

P.S.: Also relevant to the article here is the relationship between the French nuclear program and the Wuhan lab. (Both need pretty extreme safety, so I guess it's not surprising how the know-how from the former resulted in the latter !)

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

#190

Post by pfdietz »

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…

Fire truck designed for criticality accidents, sprayed borated water (at the K-25 museum in Oak Ridge, never had to be used):

http://www.k-25virtualmuseum.org/img/ha-owl-21.jpg

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