Small, overnight fire in LANL plutonium facility burned itself out

By Alaina Mencinger amencinger@sfnewmexican.com

Dec 24, 2024

Melted plastic from a light fixture dripped onto the floor and glove box parts in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium facility, igniting an overnight fire in November.

The fire, which was eventually determined to be caused by a faulty LED light bulb, self-extinguished before it was discovered by staff, according to a Nov. 22 report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

It was one of two safety incidents that occurred at PF-4 documented in the weekly report. In the other, contaminated water splashed onto a staffer cutting nuclear materials.

The small size of the fire didn’t set off the sprinkler system, although the report stated heat and smoke detectors are being installed to increase chances of detection. The light fixtures in the room where the fire happened have already been replaced, and others throughout PF-4 are being inspected to see if they also require replacement, LANL spokesman Steven Horak wrote in an email.

There is an operational fire detection system in the area, but an upgraded system for PF-4 is under construction and expected to be completed within the next year.

“That incudes the addition of many more smoke detectors, and other alarm initiating devices,” Horak wrote.

Light fixture issues

It’s not the first time there have been problems with light fixtures at the lab, the Nov. 22 report states, recommending the fixtures be checked for product recalls. The failed light bulb wasn’t part of a recall.

A fire in PF-4 could have “a significant impact” on the facility’s operations, Horak wrote.

“For safety and to avoid any impact to the national security mission, materials such as paper, plastic and other combustible materials that could contribute to a fire are kept to an absolute minimum,” Horak wrote.

To ensure those standards are met, daily inspections are conducted as part of the combustible loading program to ensure those materials are within limits. That could have prevented the fire from growing, the report states.

“This incident also demonstrates the importance of a robust combustible loading program as there were no extraneous combustibles ignited by the dripping plastic,” the report states.

Greg Mello, executive director of LANL watchdog organization Los Alamos Study Group, said the combustible program made the fire a “nothing burger.” But it raises questions about who is supervising the facility at night, Mello said.

“A bullet was dodged,” Mello said. “And maybe it wasn’t a very fatal bullet, maybe only a BB.”

Glove box upgrades slowed by supply challenges

That same week, contaminated water from a glove box also escaped its container, splashing onto a staffer working in the box. The man was cutting nuclear materials with a water-cooled saw — which can splash water inside the glove box. It’s uncertain how the water escaped its container. An investigation is ongoing.

“A worker alarmed contamination detection equipment while monitoring upon exiting the glove box gloves,” the report states. “He then noticed liquid drops on the floor and a wet spot on the chest of his coveralls.”

He was moved to the decontamination room, where he was decontaminated with “multiple showers and wipes.” No airborne contamination was detected in the room and other workers were not contaminated.

The glove box the man was working in had an older type of window secured not with bolts but with a gasket. That gasket will be inspected to determine if “additional actions should be taken” with other glove box windows.

As glove boxes are replaced, Horak wrote, they are upgraded to the latest design. He did not specify how many glove boxes in PF-4 have the old gasket design. Going forward, splash guards will be used with these types of glove boxes, Horak said.

An Office of the Inspector General report published in November identified challenges with procuring glove boxes — which are needed to increase PF-4’s capacity for pit production to reach a goal of 30 pits per year.

“To expand capacity, LANL must decontaminated, demolish and remove old equipment and install new equipment in conjunction with building pits in PF-4,” the report states.

Glove boxes are increasingly difficult to procure, National Nuclear Security Administration officials said. There are just a few companies that manufacture the containers and several vendors that used to produce them have filed for bankruptcy in recent years, according to the report. Those still in business are experiencing delays and business pressures including inflation, staffing challenges and a lack of resources.

And, Mello said, “LANL and Savannah River are competing for some of the same scarce equipment.” The Savannah River Site is the second location tapped by the federal government for plutonium pit production.

All glove box contracts for PF-4 have already been awarded, the report states. But although the nuclear security administration predicted glove boxes would be delivered in a year, the Office of the Inspector General wrote, it’s been taking double that.

In 2024, the lab received $1.76 billion to operate and modernize PF-4.

”If this was a new facility, there would be more safety features engineered in,” Mello said.

Published comment by Greg Mello:

Thanks for covering this.

Running a facility like this while modifying it is difficult. PF-4 was originally built, according to NNSA, with 100 workers in mind. Now there are more than 1,000 people working there -- operating technicians, guards, craft workers of all kinds, scientists, maintenance. It is an old facility with old equipment being replaced while major programs are ongoing within the building. Plutonium pit production will be temporary here, if indeed it can ever be established as a reliable program to begin with, because PF-4 itself has a finite life as a high-hazard facility capable of "safely" handling and processing the tons of plutonium which are now present in the facility.

At the latest, once the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility -- an adequately sized, modern, facility in the right location and supported by a much larger regional workforce with easy access to the site (which unlike LANL has been an industrial plutonium site since its inception in the 1950s) is finished and operating, LANL's pit program will perforce wind down, as all parties appear to quietly understand. LANL's pit program, at this scale and intensity, is all about supplying a multiple warhead option for the Sentinel missile, and providing a new warhead program (the W87-1) for Livermore, as a White House official once explained to me. There are already enough modern, "safe," accurate warheads for all the Sentinel missiles without the new warheads enabled by LANL production.

The entire program is a scam brought to us by our pork-oriented delegation, nuclear hawks in Congress, and greedy corporations. The safety problems, large and small, the traffic problems, the housing problems, the subordination of our political leadership, and all the other impacts we see and will see, come to us from these poorly-informed, bad choices.

In 2017, NNSA did not want to do this, but thanks to Heinrich, Udall, Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Ben Ray Lujan especially, this mission was secured for LANL as part of a two-site plan to make pits, which doubles the cost of making pits overall. That cost is now astronomical, more than the entire Manhattan Project in constant dollars, and more than only a few other infrastructure acquisitions in the U.S. Thanks a bunch.

To join the opposition to this monstrosity, go to stopthebomb.org.

Comment by Khal Spencer:

"LANL and Savannah River are competing for some of the same scarce equipment." I suspect they are competing for the same scarce people, too.

Reply by Greg Mello:

Yep. Over the past few years, specialized engineers. Later it will be experienced, trained technicians. This is part of a larger problem (as I would call it) of military industries sucking in talent we need elsewhere in society to repair and transform our infrastructure and way of life in general. Financial Times had an article I've seen quoted (original article here behind paywall https://www.ft.com/content/9625dbaa-5d36-4bee-8610-f16ab7ad6b1d) which said, "Demand for defense industry workers in the West rises to the Cold War level....According to the FinancialTimes, global military spending has reached a record $2.443 trillion."