‘Very good’ marks amid safety issues
LANL contractor receives best yearly evaluation since 2018 as lab still grappling with radiation exposures
Los Alamos National Laboratory’s primary contractor earned a “very good” score for 2023 on a federal performance review but still was bedeviled by worker safety problems, flawed planning and incidents that disrupted operations.
Triad National Security LLC earned 89% of the highest possible score on the yearly report card — its best showing since taking over lab operations in 2018 — resulting in the contractor receiving $24.4 million in bonus fees.
Combined with its regular fixed fees, Triad will be paid about $48.78 million, a bump from last year’s $47 million, according to the summary report, and the most money it has ever gotten in a year under this contract.
The lab’s federal parent agency mostly gave a glowing assessment but noted that despite making improvements in workplace safety and health, the lab still grappled with employees being exposed to radiation and radioactive materials being improperly controlled.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department branch that oversees the country’s arsenal, released the summaries Friday for five national labs and two other federal sites involved in nuclear weapons programs.
The agency offers little commentary on the ratings in the summary. It plans to make the full reports with redactions available in an electronic reading room by Feb. 26.
An anti-nuclear activist contends the scorecard is the latest example of the agency doing soft grading because it doesn’t want to irk a contractor on which it heavily depends.
“We don’t think the higher grades given this year by NNSA reflect better performance by Triad, but rather looser grading,” Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group’s executive director, wrote in an email. “Triad has recurring safety problems, which even this soft evaluation recognizes. In fact it is hard to reconcile all the
serious deficiencies mentioned here with the ‘very good’ overall rating.”
The grading period covers the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, so the evaluation doesn’t cover the series of radioactive incidents between October and January.
Still, the lab had a string of incidents before that, including eight workers being exposed to toxic beryllium dust in September, a faulty ventilation seal causing a radioactive leak in August and five breaches of glove boxes — the sealed compartments used to handle radioactive materials — in a four-week period in spring 2023.
Lab critics argue the frequency of mishaps related to handling radioactive materials has increased as the lab pursues production of 30 nuclear bomb cores, or pits, per year to modernize the arsenal and equip at least two new warheads being developed.
The nuclear agency applauded the lab’s efforts to lay the groundwork for producing the pits.
Lab teams made more prototypical test pits than expected, established a center to integrate various activities in the plutonium facility, also known as PF-4, and installed a new supercomputer, the report said. Employees also made progress on new explosive formulations.
The lab augmented nuclear safety programs to support the growing weapons mission and conducted an analysis of radiological hazards to the public and environment, the report said.
In the list of deficiencies, the report notes safety incidents disrupted operations. Sections of PF-4 were unavailable due to delays in resolving safety issues, the report said.
There also were delays in executing work schedules “due to poor coordination of work activities,” the report said.
Despite making some improvements, Triad still had problems overseeing many projects’ costs and scheduling, the report said. Also, the “production planning didn’t meet program needs.”
“This calls into question exactly when and at what price LANL will begin to meet its required level of producing at least 30 plutonium pits per year,” Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, wrote in an email. “Sadly, none of that future production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile. It is for new nuclear weapons that will enable loading multiple warheads on new intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
Coghlan noted the criticisms echoed the Government Accountability Office’s 2023 report, which said time and cost estimates to produce 30 pits per year are severely lacking and could make it difficult for federal managers to avoid cost overruns, delays and other problems.
Both Mello and Coghlan criticized the nuclear agency for its practice of withholding the full reports and redacting portions of them.
Mello argued transparency is vital in scrutinizing entities that receive enormous public funding.
“The LANL contract is one of the largest contracts issued by the federal government,” Mello wrote. “Taxpayers have a right to know where their money is going and why. This two-page summary does not tell us that.”