Engineers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory continue to upgrade the ventilation system at the plutonium pit production facility after two separate incidents where the system failed to blow contaminated air away from clean rooms where employees were working.
The most recent failure occurred on Aug. 22, when ventilation in the Plutonium Facility, called PF-4, experienced a loss of differential pressure between dirtier areas where radioactive material is allowed to be and cleaner areas where people work.
All personnel were evacuated from the affected areas in Technical Area 55 in Building 4. The plant was shut down for a day while engineers diagnosed the problem and found a solution. Normal pressures were restored to the south half of the facility several hours later through manual control, allowing regular access to that portion of the building. The northern wings remained restricted as personnel continued troubleshooting efforts until the evening of Aug. 31.
“There was never any risk to the workers, the community, or the environment,” a LANL spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor. “As with any mechanical system, components sometimes fail. We strive to minimize component failure through planned maintenance which is designed to improve system operability, reliability, availability, and maintainability.”
NNSA has spent “tens of millions of dollars” over the past decade to repair and upgrade the ventilation systems at PF-4, the LANL spokesperson said. They declined to provide a specific cost or timeline for the remaining work.
“We have been upgrading the ventilation system and other safety systems to replace aging or obsolete components,” the spokesperson said. “System engineers are assigned to all nuclear safety systems in PF-4. They track system performance through system health reports, identify necessary spare parts, and oversee maintenance on their systems.”
