NNSA RAISES SAFETY CONCERNS ON PF-4 AT LOS ALAMOS

The National Nuclear Security Administration came down hard on Los Alamos National Laboratory Sept. 16 over the lab’s failure to fully implement required criticality safety programs at its PF-4 plutonium complex, according to documents made public Sunday by the Albuquerque Journal. The documents detail the agency’s concerns with 23 criticality infractions in 2010, a trend that continued in 2011, according to a memo from Los Alamos Site Office safety official Chuck Keilers to the lab. According to the Keilers memo, the lab has missed deadlines for full implementation of required criticality safety programs three times since 2006. Keilers cited cultural problems at the lab as part of the underlying issue that has led to repeated violations of criticality safety rules: “Many operators and managers indicate they have been ‘over-trained’ and de-sensitized to the potential for criticality. They are deeply familiar with the operations but also over-confident in their assumption that the possibility of a criticality accident in PF-4 is remote.”