The contamination of 16 workers at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials Fuels Complex in November shook the nuclear establishment in eastern Idaho to its core.
It appears today that none of the workers are suffering any immediate effects from the uncontrolled release of oxidized plutonium from package of weapons grade plutonium at the retired zero power physics reactor. But the break down in basic safety measures the accident revealed hit the site like nothing seen since the early 1990s.
Now the Department of Energy has released its accident investigation report and the soul searching continues.
The Idaho Falls Post Register did an in-depth story on the report that showed the accident was preventable and the INL’s managers had numerous opportunities to avoid the conditions that led to the contamination. Management at the ZPPR had changed hands since the fuel was removed from the rector and stored.
But Argonne National Laboratory, the Illinois-based lab that used to manage the facility, had left a good document trail to guide workers when they came back to handle it, the report showed.
The board that conducted the investigation “found that during the organizational transition, historical ZPPR work practices and information were lost; these could have been used to establish more effective work controls for handing plutonium fuel plates,” the report said.
And it was critical of the contractor Battelle Energy Alliance for weakness in the work planning and control process.
“The underlying problem is that (Battelle) did not recognize the hazards associated with
the possibility of releasing plutonium material,” the report sad. “None of the work planning addressed the radiological and engineered controls necessary for mitigating a potential release of airborne plutonium.”
These findings prompted the Post Register to come down hard in an editorial.
"The support of this community is the foundation for everything that has been built at the lab. If because of fears for worker safety, that support erodes, the whole thing might just crumble to the ground," the editorial said.
That prompted INL lab director John Grossenbacher, who heads Battelle in Idaho, to come to the defense of the managers under him even as he agreed with the findings of the report.
“If you are going to point to anybody, it ought to be me, because I’m the guy that’s responsible for making sure those systems and standards are appropriate,” Grossenbacher told the Post Register’s Sven Berg.
The Post Register got some support in its prognosis from Nuclear industry columnist and blogger Dan Yurman, who said in a blog they “nailed it.”
When our own Kevin Richert reported in the early 1990s all kinds of violations of safety standards at the INL’s Naval Reactors Facilities, based on leaked documents many readers in that nuclear dominated community were critical. They said we journalists were making a big thing out of nothing.
But Richert, then a reporter for the Post Register, was leaked the documents because safety officials trained under legendary nuclear pioneer Admiral Hyman Rickover considered the violations the harbinger to worse accidents to come if changes weren’t made. What the industry didn’t like was showing its dirty laundry in public.
Yurman said as much about this incident.
“Specialists in the field will tell you that a series of small, even unrelated incidents, are, statistically speaking, seen as precursors to much bigger ones that can lead to catastrophic outcomes including fatalities,” Yurman wrote. “Unless workers trust their management, and themselves through peer-to-peer safety awareness, accidents will happen.”
The same issue has come to head in North Idaho’s Lucky Friday Mine. Two miners died last year in apparently unrelated incidents. Then federal officials closed the mine for a completely unrelated problem identified in the mine’s shaft.
Now the entire community suffers along with the families who lost loved ones. The mine will shut down for a year to make improvements to meet the concerns. INL officials don’t want the same thing to happen to them.
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Seems the public was also exposed to plutonium from INL accident
INL claimed no plutonium escaped to the public, but it appears that was another lie.
On page 96/123 the report appears to quietly admits this leak occured under a ventilation hood that was made to spew the airborne material directly outside the building, for. That puts airborne plutonium into the outside air, available to resuspend with the wind, for kids to inhale.
While our politicians protest waste, but demand more dangerous projects, the truth is INL can NOT even handle waste safely. That is the simplest task in the nuclear experiments at INL.
We can still demand a full plutonium cleanup for $13 billion in jobs, but Butch and Crapo are to corrupted by donations to protect Idaho families.
Why do I work harder than DEQ Oversight to protect Idaho families?
From p 96 :
Workroom Hood Failed Was not specifically designed or
qualified for this work.
This barrier did not prevent the
uncontrolled release of
radioactivity.
It's Monday morning quarterbacking, but...
A gazillion years ago when I served in the Navy, I handled all sorts of hazardous material, from toxic fluids right on up to nuclear depth charges. The very first rule of safely working with any of those dangerous materials was to know exactly what you were handling. The second rule was to know exactly what the procedure was to handle it, from A to Z. That meant knowing what to do when things were going correctly and what to do when something went wrong. It means that everyone had to know their role in handling the material and it was a good idea to know everybody else's roles as well.
And here's the deal: Some people got complacent. Some people got in a hurry. Some people just didn't know exactly what they were doing. And some people got hurt. Now, the folks who got hurt bore a certain amount of responsibility for not following the rules. But it was the guys who were supervising the operation, the senior petty officers and junior commissioned officers, right on up to the commanding officer, who were really at fault.
Thankfully, I was never involved in an evolution that went haywire. And I credit the excellent leadership of the various chains of command that I was in back then. Anyway, the bottom line is that John Grossenbacher is right - the responsibility lies with him. And it's up to him to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Direct proof INL lied claiming no plutonium left the building!
Clearly the original INL claim that nothing left the building because it was immediately sealed is a bold lie, as seen on p 41/123:
During this investigation, BEA explained how dose consequences were analyzed for the
identified hazards. This discussion indicated that for ZPPR Workroom accidents, such as the
“Failure of workroom hood” and “Dropped Pu fuel plate leading to ignition of fuel plate” (DSA-
006-ZPPR, Table 3-8), worker dose was calculated at a distance of 200 meters (m), taking credit
for a stack release and resulting atmospheric dispersion.
Oh shut up. It's hardly enough to matter if so.
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GOP Wants to do away with the Department of Energy
It's a priority on all their lists. Less people to protect the consumers the better, I guess.
Once again, Dr. Rickards is
Once again, Dr. Rickards is trying to scare the public by misrepresenting information. The phrase "uncontrolled release" refers to the release of radiation within the work room, inside the facility.
Furthermore, the report clearly states on page 7 that on the day of the event, "airborne surveys outside the building were negative, indicating that the radioactive contamination was contained within the ZPPR Facility." Both INL and Idaho's Dept. of Environmental Quality have airborne radiation monitors stationed throughout DOE's Idaho Site. Assertions of a release beyond the facility are false.
Nicole Stricker, PhD.
Idaho National Laboratory
Safety suffers at INL, but Dr Nicole is paid to spin denial.
Hi Nicole,
Gee, you had to work overtime to post a 6 PM rebuttal trying to find a fig leaf to cover up the public exposure of what INL wants no one to see...
What part of my original report quote don't you understand? IE, "From p 96 :
Workroom Hood Failed:
Was not specifically designed or qualified for this work. This barrier did not prevent the uncontrolled release of radioactivity."
Yes, Nicole, after 7 years on the CDC Citizen Advisory panel, I do understand the air monitors, and their weaknesses in detecting this kind of puff release if the wind blows it elswhere than the 30 or so little boxes y'all have for fig leafs.
It seems clear the report says safety warnings were ignored in 2010, despite your continual claims your triple safety layer "Defense in Depth" protects Idahoans from the many proposed experiments at INL.
While the report clearly says this work should have been done in a contained glove box, you did it under a hood NOT built for containment.
Even the other HEPA filtered exhaust ducts had their upstream monitors REMOVED by INL's WRONG safety analysis, to cut costs!
And could you be specific on what you claim above I have previously said wrong before. Was it my 20 year truthful claim that "ALL" never meant "ALL", as DEQ finally admitted to the Post-Register last fall? :-)
Here is the report quote on removing the best upstream monitors...Peter
Page 47&48/123
"Analysis
The need to remove the alpha and beta-gamma upstream monitors was based on cost issues relevant to maintenance and replacement of the equipment, but no cost/benefit analysis was performed to support the decision." SNIP
"If the upstream alpha monitoring capabilities had been maintained for DID protection of the facility and workers in accordance with its safety basis description, and if the Control Room alarm panel was required to be monitored during fuel handling activities, then the release of airborne radioactive material associated with this accident would have been more readily detected, especially after visible quantities of unconfined Pu were exposed to the hood air.
Instead, personnel were exposed to airborne Pu for more than four minutes before the CAM monitoring the Vault exhaust alarmed and they evacuated the Workroom."
Didn't they follow that procedure?
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
Thank-you Nicole
for maintaining your dignity in the face of Dr. Rickard's complete lack of common decency when it comes to addressing you.
Truth is hard to come by
Whatchya talkin' 'bout Political_Junkie?
Hi PJ,
First, I always smile and shake hands with Nicole, and all the other nice INL employees.
Above, I am telling the truth. Nicole is paid to spin for INL, and she did post the weak rebuttal at 6 PM, indicating it took a while for her team of advisors to muster a response.
I don't call Nicole nasty names above. No B word. No Dan Ackroyd "Jane, you ignorant sl*t" for old SNL fans.
Let me put the important point simpler:
Since the downstream exhaust alarms sounded, doesn't that mean and prove pu did leave the building?
On page 32 of the report it DOES say the exhaust alarm sounded. It is in the context of complaining INL removed other alarms that could have shortened the 4 minute gap before the exhaust alarm sounded.
INL and Nicole originally claimed nothing left the building because it immediately was sealed. Ahh yes, "the truth is hard to come by" :-) ...Peter
From page 32: "Instead, personnel were exposed to airborne Pu for more than four minutes before the CAM monitoring the Vault exhaust alarmed and they evacuated the Workroom."
Good one Rocky
"shook the nuclear establishment in eastern Idaho to its core."
Peter, I appreciate the
Peter,
I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the issues causing this confusion, but please don't presume to know my work schedule or job description. I am paid to correct the record when false information is perpetuated. And my job entails far more than watching the Statesman website to respond immediately to comments -- you would be mistaken to assume that the entire time between your comment and mine is spent drafting a response. On Monday, for example, I learned of your comment at 5 p.m. as I was entering a meeting. It took all of 5 minutes to review the report and conclude how/why its language may have been confusing you. I have since received additional clarification from INL experts who know much more about the specifics than I.
To clarify again: "uncontrolled release" does not mean radioactivity left the building. It means radioactive particles were not contained in the hood, resulting in employee exposure that was not controlled.
As to your comment of 1/23, 2:22 p.m.: you cite a part of the report referencing an worst-case SCENARIO analysis, not an analysis of the actual event that occurred.
Finally, no, the sounding of "downstream exhaust" alarms does NOT mean Pu left the building. The report's use of the words upstream and downstream refer to airflow inside the facility. The passage you cite referencing Vault exhaust relates to the airflow between two rooms: the vault room and the work room. The report notes that a monitor closer to the point where the work was being done would have sounded sooner than the alarm positioned near the louver connecting the work room to the fuel vault.
I appreciate the time you've invested to carefully read this report in its entirety and I always welcome the opportunity to provide clarification.
Nicole Stricker, PhD
Idaho National Laboratory
thanks
Thanks for your efforts here Nicole and for the INL's effort to provide public information on things like this.
Are WE the only ones that ever ANSWER these threads?
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.