The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Enterprise Assessments said it will investigate an incident in a Los Alamos National Lab facility that resulted in a “near miss to a fatality.”
The DOE watchdog office decided to investigate lab prime contractor Los Alamos National Security (LANS) following a September incident in which “a LANS worker entered a room containing an oxygen deficient atmosphere,” according to a Dec. 6 letter Kevin Dressman, acting director of the Enterprise Assessments Office of Enforcement, sent to Charles McMillan, president of LANS and director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“We are cooperating fully with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Enforcement,” a LANS spokesperson said by email Monday.
The probe is expected to involve a site visit and interviews with LANS workers, along with a request for documentation, according to Dressman’s letter.
One source said personnel from the Enterprise Assessments office are expected to visit the lab in mid-January, by which time McMillan will have retired. Terry Wallace, now the lab’s principal associate director for global security since, is slated to take over as director.
The incident in room S131 of Building 40 — the Physics Building in the lab’s Technical Area 3 — occurred Sept. 13. LANS reported the incident to DOE on Sept. 18, according to the Enterprise Assessments letter.
According to LANS’ report, a technician classified as a “Space Instrument Realization Subject Matter Expert” entered the room after a low-oxygen alarm sounded. The technician, who had intentionally left the room’s thermal vacuum system running overnight as part of a test, discovered a liquid-nitrogen leak and cut it off by closing a supply valve inside the room. The technician then left the room.
Lab procedures specify that, in the event of a low-oxygen alarm, personnel should cut off room S131’s liquid nitrogen feed using a valve outside of the building.
