Nuclear labs endanger public with radioactive mail
Plutonium, highly toxic chemicals shipped improperly
Center for Public Integrity
Plutonium capable of being used in a nuclear weapon, conventional explosives and highly toxic chemicals have been improperly packaged or shipped by nuclear weapons contractors at least 25 times in the past five years, according to government documents.
While the materials were not ultimately lost, the 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 afNational ter 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.
Only a few, slight penalties appear to 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 lab in Livermore, California. But “there was no urgency in receiving this shipment — this notion is incorrect,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said in an email.
The incident drew swift condemnation by officials at the Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, D.C. It also provoked the Energy Department on June 23 to order a three-week halt to all shipments out of Los Alamos.
“All of those involved from the individual contributor level up the management chain have been held accountable through actions that include terminations, suspensions and compensation consequences,” Los Alamos spokesman Matthew Nerzig said.
The documents show that Los Alamos, in particular, has been a repeat offender in mislabeling its shipments of hazardous materials. In a previously undisclosed 2012 case, for example, it sent unlabeled plutonium — a highly carcinogenic, unstable metal — to a University of New Mexico laboratory where graduate students sometimes work, according to internal government reports. The plutonium was accidentally opened there, leading to a contamination of the lab that required cleaning and disposal.