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Radiation contamination found in LANL's plutonium hub; safety board said protocols not followed Aug 27, 2025 Workers in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium facility tracked contamination throughout a waste staging area, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report this month, alarming radiation monitors in the basement. The area was labeled a “high contamination area” in response. But when a fact-finding meeting was held a few days after the incident, corrective measures couldn’t be developed, the report states, after the group of workers responsible for the waste didn’t show. A lab spokesperson attributed the absence to missing information. “At the time the meeting was scheduled it was not clear which group had generated the waste,” Steven Horak wrote in an email. “Because that information was not available, that group was not specifically invited to participate. There was an immediate follow up meeting with the group that generated the waste.” PF-4, LANL’s plutonium hub, is a more than 230,000-square-foot facility that started operating in 1978. The lab is in the midst of renovating the aging infrastructure and, at the same time, ramping up production capabilities for plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear weapons. A little more than a week before the Aug. 8 report was finalized, technicians found contamination on a half-dozen workers’ booties, leading back to an area with staged waste bags. After the monitors detected the contamination, technicians found a high concentration at a storage pallet where damaged waste bags were being stored. An unspecified type of oil was leaking underneath, according to the report. Horak wrote the personnel were wearing the correct protective clothing and no skin exposure occurred. The fact-finding meeting held after the incident found several procedures, including waste storage and packing procedures, hadn’t been followed and corrective measures were needed. “Corrective actions include increasing awareness of the procedure and creating a learning team to drive process improvements,” Horak wrote. “Lessons learned from the event will also be shared across the organization involved at the next scheduled safety standdown.” Attendees of the fact-finding meeting drew parallels to other contamination incidents in April, the report states, when evidence of the spread of heat-source plutonium contamination was reported twice in the facility’s basement. At the time, the origin of the contamination was unknown but was thought to be a collection of waste bags stored in the basement — although the bags contained waste from rooms with “minimal or no known quantities” of heat-source plutonium. “During a fact-finding meeting, Triad [LANL’s operating contractor] staff discussed a number of possible concerns, including the waste packaging, handling, and storage practices,” the May report stated. “Triad is continuing to look at corrective actions and steps they can take to improve waste handling and management practices for low-level waste in the Plutonium Facility." Earlier this year, LANL announced it was phasing in 24/7 shift operations in its plutonium facility. A fact sheet published on the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions website said in fiscal year 2025, about 400 workers involved with PF-4 would move to shift work, joining a small percentage of workers who had been working the around-the-clock schedule since April 2024. At the time the fact sheet was published, there were four shifts: two day shifts and two night shifts. Shift workers would work days or nights four days a week, either Tuesday through Friday or Friday through Monday. “The Lab’s plutonium pit production mission brings unique challenges,” the fact sheet states. “Pit production involves starting and steadily increasing the production of war reserve pits while simultaneously updating PF-4 with equipment that will increase reliability for the mission. The main driver for the 24/7 shift is to ensure the equipment required for the pit mission is installed to support production needs." Published comments by Greg Mello:
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