Posted on 01/23/2004 8:17:12 PM PST by 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.
It was just the engine, though, no missile of course.
But some silly-arse reporter got his panties in a wad and reported that it was a missile accident and theorized what all "could have happened" based of course on it being a missile and not merely an engine, and assuming that none of the safeguards associated with a complete missile worked, and assuming it wasn't mounted in a test stand over a test pit and so on, inside a secure facility on a secure base in a not very populated part of the country. The press paranoia was amazing- I suppose the initial reporters' calling the test pit a "missile silo" didn't help- and some reports made it out of a "missile explosion" when in fact no missile was involved.
The way one guy wrote it you would have thought that "missile" came within a snake's sniff of blowing away NY City and radiating the eastern seaboard.
The Miami Herald reporter couldn't seem to get over the locals at the BBQ joint not being concerned about the "imminent threat" posed by those nearby engines. He called the locals "countryfried eggheads."
The press was determined to smear the entire missile program over it; in much the way reporters today treat SUVs.
Turned out the engine wasn't the problem, it was the test stand supports which held it out over the pit. There was a minute flaw in their metal which had reached its fatigue point and gave out. The technicians screwed up later while cleaning up and were killed down in the pit- there was fuel around, but that was the sum of it.
As I noticed from some of the other posts.
My point is that people do what they have to do, they find workarounds. That's fine by me, and I think it has to be taken into consideration when you design systems (although, obviously you can't think of everything).
To me, the issue is getting designers, management, consultants, etc. to realize that NOTHING always works the way it's supposed to work and that s#$t will happen. What I find interesting, and what I hope to do my research on, is what happens when the s#$t hits the fan? How do people cope with the non-routine?
I kinda wish I hadn't read about what you guys do to make sure "it works fine." : )
LOL
Except on test ranges, all US nukes are supposed to be "one point safe". The criterion of one point safety is satisfied if, given that detonation of the warhead's high explosives has taken place at any one point, there is less than one chance in a million of obtaining a nuclear yield exceeding that equivalent to four pounds of HE.
To obtain a nuclear yield, a number of the famous lens shaped charges must be fired simultaneously to form a spherical implosion wave that compresses the plutonium core, increasing its density very suddenly, to satisfy the conditions for a chain reaction. If the charges don't go off at exactly the same time, you don't get a properly shaped shock wave, and the result is a nasty industrial accident instead of a wiped out city.
Video: http://www.airextreme.de/B-52dwn_.avi
This was a really sad and unnecessary crash. It was a practice run for an upcoming airshow, and the (extremely experienced) pilot had been on "probation" for hotdogging too much. The base commander (IIRC) was even on board to watch over his performance, and one of the crew was on his last scheduled flight before his retirement -- his wife was at the base to throw the traditional champagne party for him. It was 100% pilot error. Such a waste.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.