By Lindsay Potter
The U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has reported five “glove box breaches” at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) between March and April 2023, which exposed personnel to hazardous radioactivity. The glove boxes are sealed compartments that allow workers to handle plutonium by placing their hands into lead-lined gloves built into the boxes. Breaches happen often at LANL. There were three recorded over the course of one month last year. Though the April report denies resulting contamination, a January 2022 event caused air contamination double the “yearly limit” permitted in the work space and exposed four workers, one of whom required chelation treatment to remove heavy metals from the body. The following month, a worker’s face was contaminated by a release from a damaged glove. In 2021, a breached glove box contaminated three workers, and a plutonium container cooling vat spilled 1,800 gallons of radioactive water. In a second vat overflow, water ran through an air vent and into a glove box on a lower floor. In June 2020, one glove box leak contaminated 14 workers. LANL’s contractor, Triad National Security, was not fined for the violations and no corrective actions have been required before a planned increase in plutonium “pit” production is to begin, which will require greater use of the glove boxes. The public will not have a chance for direct comment on new pit production during LANL’s environmental analysis, according to Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Greg Mello, of Los Alamos Study Group, reports the National Nuclear Security Administration is pushing Triad to be safe while ramping up production to 30 pits a year for warheads, saying, “It’s difficult to do both.”
— Santa Fe New Mexican, June 2 & May 17, 2023
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