Nuclear labs’ radioactive mail endangers public
Plutonium, conventional explosives and highly toxic chemicals have been improperly packaged or shipped by weapons contractors at least 25 times in the past five years.
Though the materials were not ultimately lost, government documents reveal repeated instances in which hazardous substances vital to making nuclear bombs and their components were mislabeled before shipment. That means those transporting and receiving them were not warned of the safety risks and did not take required precautions to protect themselves or the public, the reports say. The risks were discovered after regulators conducted inspections during transit, when the packages were opened at their destinations, during scientific analysis after the items were removed from packaging, or — in the worst cases — after releases of radioactive contaminants by unwary recipients, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigation showed. A few slight penalties have been imposed for these mistakes. In the most recent such instance, Los Alamos National Laboratory — a privately run, government-owned nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico — admitted five weeks ago that in June, it had improperly shipped unstable, radioactive plutonium in three containers to two other government-owned labs via FedEx cargo planes, instead of complying with federal regulations that required using trucks to limit the risk of an accident. Los Alamos initially told the government that its decision stemmed from an urgent need for the plutonium at a federal
famously took on Wall Street after the real estate collapse in 2008 and transformed her popularity as a consumer crusader into a Senate bid. California’s Feinstein is the ranking Democrat on the powerful Judiciary committee.
“Port trucking companies’ brazen disregard for federal transportation safety standards and workers’ safety and rights is shameful,” they wrote in Monday’s letter. They pledged to “pursue aggressively all federal avenues to put an end to this rampant mistreatment of port truck drivers.”
Since USA TODAY Network published its investigation in June, elected officials across the country have been pressing for action.
Dozens of lawmakers from the Los Angeles City Council to Capitol Hill have denounced the business practices, many of them calling on retail corporations to better police their trucking contractors.
Target, which has called the mistreatment of workers in its supply chain “unacceptable,” declined to comment. Other retailers contacted Monday afternoon by USA TODAY did not have an immediate response.
As they investigated the port trucking industry, reporters contacted two dozen retail companies, including Target, Costco and
Rep. Grace Napolitano, DCalif., said she’s working with Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to resurrect a federal bill, the Clean Ports Act, that would give states and cities the power to better enforce labor laws and standards in the port trucking industry.
In California, state Rep. Ricardo Lara said he’s drafting another bill to tweak California law so companies would have to disclose how they audit their operations at American ports.
California law already requires big companies doing business in the state to disclose what efforts they make to monitor their supply chain overseas. But retailers are not required to apply those standards to their U.S. shipping operations.
“We can’t ignore the reality of what’s happening in our backyard,” Lara said.
Federal lawmakers have called regulators to begin working with state officials to crack down on labor law violators.
Hundreds of California drivers have testified in state labor cases that they were cheated out of wages. Many described potential crimes, including managers who coerced them to work past the legal limit of hours and doctor logs, at times physically preventing workers from going home. But that information has not led to criminal investigations at the federal or state level.
The USA TODAY Network’s investigation focused on trucking companies around Los Angeles, where two ports are responsible for about half of all imports brought into the country.
In 2008, California officials ordered trucking companies at the ports to replace old big rigs with cleaner trucks. The companies pushed that cost onto drivers with a lease-to-own program, forcing many drivers to work around the clock. When they got sick or fell behind on payments, companies fired them, seizing their trucks and thousands they had paid in.
Company owners deny the claims made by their drivers, arguing most drivers are successful, and those who aren’t have the freedom to quit.