Police in Bellevue, Wash., last month got an alarming call from an Air Force Museum in Ohio, alerting them that a town resident had offered to donate a pre-Vietnam unguided nuclear rocket.
The department’s bomb squad responded to find the remains of an AIR-2 Genie Rocket, produced until 1962. The unguided air-to-air rocket would have carried a 1.5-kiloton W25 nuclear warhead, but this one was deemed inert – without a warhead attached – by bomb squad technicians, according to the Bellvue Police Department’s blog.
The rocket formerly belonged to the resident’s now-deceased neighbor. Without fuel or a warhead, the rocket was deemed inert. Because the military did not request the munition back, police left the rocket to be restored for display in a museum.
In February 2022, an unapproved Bluetooth device was allowed into a Sandia National Laboratories facility where such devices are not allowed, according to a recent report from the Department of Energy’s Inspector General (IG). The device also was not tracked while inside the facility, the IG found.
The device in question was used to track a “multimillion-dollar tool to enhance production capabilities” at Sandia,” the report said. “The vendor required that a Bluetooth-enabled device be attached to it during transit and installation to validate the warranty.”
The IG cleared SNL management of allegations that they attempted to cover up the incident. The watchdog made four recommendations that Sandia beef up its processes for identifying and tracking unapproved electronic devices, which Sandia agreed to implement.
Specially equipped National Nuclear Security Administration helicopters swooped over Las Vegas this week, in preparation for Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, February 11.
Low-altitude flights by NNSA’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) aircraft were seen over the Las Vegas Valley from Monday to Thursday, sipping the air for small traces of radiological material that could indicate the presence of a nuclear device.
The NNSA’s twin-engine Bell 412 helicopters, equipped with radiation-sensing technology, fly grid patterns at 150 feet or higher at about 80 mph. They are a regular sight in the skies over locations hosting major events, like presidential inaugurations, sporting events and other high-profile large gatherings.
Just before 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 9, while walking through a parking lot at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 55, an employee with the lab’s metal production group was struck by a Toyota Tacoma pickup owned by an employee with the TA-55 Facility Operations group, according to a federal safety watchdog.
The truck, with a four-inch lift and headlights on, struck the other employee, who had stepped off a nearby sidewalk into an intersection and looked for vehicles but did not see the oncoming truck, according to a Feb. 1 report. There was no crosswalk for pedestrians and no stop sign at the intersection.
The collision resulted in an open fracture to the pedestrian’s left upper arm. The employee was transported to the Los Alamos Medical Center and then to Christus St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, N.M., where they were admitted. The employee was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 11 and is on indefinite leave.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi visited Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in person for the fourth time this week since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Grossi said there has been no shelling at Europe’s largest nuclear plant since May when the United Nations Security Council established protocols and allocated personnel to protect the plant, according to a Feb. 8 IAEA statement.
Though no major nuclear accident has occurred at the plant, located on the frontlines and in Russian-held territory, he warned against complacency “towards the very real dangers” that the plant still faces. The facility came under fire several times in 2022 and has lost all off-site power eight times, most recently in December.
The Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration plan to hold an information day Feb. 13 in Las Vegas to discuss potential clean energy projects, such as solar, at the Nevada National Security Site, the agencies announced Friday.
DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will issue a Request for Qualifications, expected next month, on such potential carbon-free power projects or at least 200 megawatts at the Nevada site. A draft request for qualifications was issued previously.
