Workers Taped Together Explosive Pieces (Pantex Nuclear Plant)

AP/Yahoo ^ | 1-23-2004 | Matt Kelley

[blam]

Workers Taped Together Explosive Pieces

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Workers at the only U.S. factory for dismantling nuclear weapons risked an explosion this month by taping together broken pieces of high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead, federal investigators said.

The unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites).

Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board chairman John T. Conway said in the letter, which raised disquieting questions about safety at the Energy Department's Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas.

No one was hurt and nothing exploded.

However, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, is investigating, spokesman Bryan Wilkes said Friday.

"Safety remains a priority for us," Wilkes said. "We are working to address the issues in the letter."

Conway's letter did not make clear whether the explosive had been separated at the time from the softball-sized chunk of plutonium that forms the "pit," or trigger, of a thermonuclear warhead. To prevent a thermonuclear blast, the pit would have to have been separated from the larger warhead.

But if the explosive were still connected to the trigger, an explosion could have injured or killed workers, and could have spread plutonium or other radioactive materials around the facility.

The taping and removal of the explosive did not go as planned, and only quick thinking by the technicians prevented them from dropping the explosive, Conway wrote.

Conway said that taping the explosives together was just one of several mistakes made by Pantex officials that risked an explosion. Pantex officials also downplayed the risk, Conway noted, calling the cracks in the explosive and the fact that workers taped it together a "trivial" change in procedures.

Jud Simmons, a spokesman for Pantex plant operator BWX Technologies Inc., did not return telephone messages on Friday.

The problem occurred when workers were dismantling the plutonium "pit" from a nuclear warhead. The pit is the sphere of plutonium metal surrounded by explosives. When those explosives detonate, the plutonium is compressed, causing a nuclear explosion. In a thermonuclear weapon, that explosion sets off an even stronger nuclear blast.

Workers found the explosives around the pit were cracked, making them more unstable and easier to detonate, Conway wrote. Their solution was to tape together the cracked explosives and move them to another location.

In his letter, Conway said problems with that included:

_ Failing to consult the explosives' manufacturer to determine how unstable the cracked explosives might be;

_ Performing an incomplete and inadequate safety review before going ahead;

_ Allowing workers to perform the taping and removal without practicing on a mock-up;

_ Failing to have experts who had developed the procedure watch the taping and removal to try to spot any problems.

Conway's letter does not elaborate on what might have happened if the explosive had detonated.

About 250,000 people live within 50 miles of the Pantex plant.

The Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has an inspector stationed at the Pantex plant and at the nation's other nuclear weapons sites. Weekly reports by that inspector, William White, show several concerns with safety at the plant, including flaws in the software designed to control the movement of nuclear and explosive materials around the site.

White reported in October that Pantex technicians had made a mistake while dismantling a W62 warhead from a Minuteman missile. A drill damaged part of the warhead's nuclear core, prompting officials to evacuate the facility until experts determined that no radiation had leaked, White wrote.

[U S Army EOD]

Every once in a while, people hit these things with a fork lift or just drop them. They don't go boom. You just send them back to the plant and fix them. No big deal. They are not magic.

[U S Army EOD]

Sad but true.

[Empireoftheatom48]

Why do they have Demorats doing this??

[DonnerT]

If they had gone through all those beaureaucratic steps someone would have certainly been hurt.

[Travis McGee]

What you said earlier should have gotten more attention. These things have been in PLANE CRASHES and they just scattered a mess. No "Broken Arrow" starring John Travolta drama. No Hollywood digital timer heading for zero. No "cut the red wire! No, the green wire!"

[U S Army EOD]

They weren't Democrats because Democrats would not have the initative to use the tape in the first place. Remember, Democrats are not allowed to think for themselves. They would have left the explosive to move around and be unstable because it was what they were told to do in their procedure that was written by an individual that didn't have enough experience to anticipate the explosive sphere could possibly be damaged in this way.

[U S Army EOD]

Just the same, I am sure somebody's ass hole puckers when we loose a nuke.

[radiohead]

The mind wonders what "potentially unacceptable consequences," are in a nuclear bomb facility!

No kidding! This is a great article. I just finished writing part of an answer to a doctoral exam in which I discuss unintended consequences of technology use. Seems like the techies developing this stuff never think anything will go wrong - and of course it does.

Big difference between problematic uses of PowerPoint and a nuclear explosion, tho! As was clear in the article, the designers never thought people would duct tape the damn explosives!

[U S Army EOD]

But it works fine.

[DonnerT]

Your ass wasn't on the line.
You don't have the experience those dismantlers have.
Odds are the "engineer" who wrote the stupid, supercautious, dangerous delay proceedures never took one apart.
I'd trust the guys doing the job instead of the beaureaucrat.

[Travis McGee]

Big time! I forget all those message traffic code words to do with those incidents, but I remember how they went to the top of the FLASH pile! One of our contingency ops was always to be ready to go anywhere anytime (and I mean anywhere) to secure an area where one came down. No kidding, real world contingency ops. It never happened that I was aware of, but I knew that if certain messages came, we would drop everything and get ready to jump onto an area to secure it. Real bullets and everything, and even in other countries, with or without their permission or knowledge.

[U S Army EOD]

Very good.

[U S Army EOD]

I know quite a few guys that worked on real incidents during the 60's when it seemed it was raining B52's. Nothing ever went as planned. Initiative and logic will get you through.

[Travis McGee]

PS: I should have added that we would have dragged along a few EOD guys to actually deal with the device. We would just be security, sort of first-responders.

[DonnerT]

Thanks for the Bio.

Proves my point. The only danger his ass has ever encountered was falling out of an office chair.

[isom35]

I can relate to these guys. I used to put silver furnace tape on my Chevy Nova to stop the rust from spreading.

[U S Army EOD]

By the way, we have a guy who lives near me that went into UDT in 1943 and stayed with that and SEALS plus a little Navy EOD until 1973. His name is Henry Staples. He is in the movie Frogmen with Richard Widmark.

And speaking of Navy EOD, rent the Elvis movie, "Girls, Girls, Girls" Elvis is a Navy EOD guy.

[Travis McGee]

Aren't a couple of them still unaccounted for to this day? I seem to remember that there might still be one we never recovered off of Spain, and maybe another off of Virginia. My brain cells from those days are pretty well beaten to a pulp.

[U S Army EOD]

Or tripping over a sleeping Wackenhut guard.

[Travis McGee]

He was a bit before my time! In my brief time in the teams, I was lucky enough to take out the last platoon from UDT-21, and return with the first platoon from ST-4. UDT-21 was I believe the only team in continuous commission from the very beginning. Many UDTs came and went as wars waxed and waned, but 21 was there from the beginning to the end in 1983. Now it lives on as ST-4, still in Little Creek Virginia, with Central and South America and the Carib as its primary AOR.