Los Alamos Mishaps

NATIONAL LABS

Federal investigators are looking into two more apparent lapses in security and safety at Los Alamos National Laboratory, including an employee's mishandling of a potentially hazardous radioactive substance that led to contamination in four states.

The Department of Energy dispatched investigators last week to examine the mishaps, and staff members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee plan to question officials from the University of California, which manages the nuclear weapons lab under government contract. Last year, operations at the facility were suspended for more than six months following several accidents and allegations of missing classified information.

"Los Alamos spent at least $500 million in taxpayer dollars to get safety and security standards beefed up. All the evidence we've seen so far this year is that it has failed miserably," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

In the first incident, a researcher failed to follow required procedures and unpacked a shipment that contained a small amount of americium-241, a radioactive metal primarily used in smoke detectors. After a supervisor uncovered the incident in July, a survey detected contamination in the employee's workspace.

Trace amounts were subsequently found in the employee's home in New Mexico, in homes in Kansas and Colorado that he visited, and at DOE's Bettis Laboratory in Pennsylvania, which received a contaminated package from Los Alamos. Lab officials say that the "extremely low levels" of radioactive material found off-site "do not pose a credible risk to the general public."

In the second incident, in June, two workers inhaled fumes while mixing concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids in a facility with a "degraded" ventilation system. Both exhibited symptoms of overexposure, and one employee was hospitalized for six days.