Glovebox Fire shuts portion of LANL plutonium lab for nearly a month

December 12, 2023
By Dan Parsons

On Nov.6 the Los Alamos Fire Department responded to the highly-secure Plutonium Facility at the national laboratory for a report of a fire inside a glovebox used to manipulate radioactive material. 

It took until Nov. 20 to reopen the room where the fire occurred, after all the gloves on the gloveboxes in the room were changed. The affected glovebox is still out of service except for recovery of materials inside, according to a LANL report on the incident.

On the day of the incident, an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) Actinide Material Processing and Power, Materials Recovery and Recycle Group was performing an operation using a “Cremated Remains Machine” inside a glovebox within the Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 when they saw sparks and a fire after closing the lid and turning on the machine.

Operators in the vicinity of the glovebox activated two drop box fire alarms, after which radiological control technicians in the room performed full body scans, checked the hallway, and evacuated the room.

The Los Alamos Fire Department was dispatched, and found no visible flames, smoke, or fire once firefighters arrived on scene. Access to the room and the associated lab area was shut. 

About an hour later the facility director declared a “potential inadequate safety analysis,” meaning the building’s safety procedures may not have anticipated an event like the fire in the cremated remains machine. There were no effects on personnel health, safety, the facility, or the environment, the report on the incident said. 

The Nov. 6 fire was rooted in the cleanup of legacy radioactive material, or material leftover from projects that are not active anymore, that began On Nov. 1. Employees began to remediate the legacy material, which required checking for flammability. Those operations were what led to the brief fire.