January 28, 2019
Re: Preview of more problems to come with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) pit production
Dear interested colleagues --
You may have seen the following reports and articles.
1. You may have read these recent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) products, of interest in relation to plutonium pit production at LANL:
A few of the more important findings (in italics) and our comments:
p. 1: "Improvement of the NCSP [Nuclear Criticality Safety Program] will be further challenged by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plans for increased production goals in the coming years, the upcoming change in LANL’s management and operating contractor, and recent changes in the management of the Nuclear Criticality Safety Division (NCSD)."
In the next 3-6 years, NNSA plans to increase PF-4 production throughput by roughly a factor of ten in three major missions: pit production (most recent production: 2012), pit disassembly and conversion, and Pu-238 heat source production.
p. 1,3: After 13 years of profound struggles (beginning in 2005 and including a multiyear PF-4 shutdown for high-mass operations) to bring the LANL NCSP into compliance with "applicable DOE requirements and industry standards," only 11 of 25.5 full-time criticality safety safety are fully qualified.
p. 3 "...the [DNFSB] staff team has little confidence that LANL can achieve compliance with applicable standards in less than five years [i.e. by 2023]."
p. 5 "The contrast between the high level of performance demonstrated during formal assessments and the deficient performance exhibited in several subsequent events highlights a disparity between work that is overseen by management and work that is not. This disparity in operational quality indicates that LANL’s workforce has not fully internalized the importance of following established criticality safety practices at all times. Recognizing these challenges, LANL increased management presence in the facility during select operations. However, while this may improve the quality of those specific operations for which management is present, it does not address the underlying concern of what transpires in the absence of management."
This phenomenon speaks volumes about the actual working culture at LANL, which is problematic as regards high-hazard operations for decades. There is no answer in sight.
The seismic qualification of PF-4 with respect to a design basis earthquake has been unresolved since 1996, when LANL staff geologists and their consultants began publishing their work on regional seismicity, which increased estimated maximum Holocene accelerations an order of magnitude. The DOE 2007 Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) and its 2009 update officially quantified the seismic risk, now vastly higher than was used in PF-4 design in the early 1970s. A seemingly-unending process of PF-4 structural analysis, structural and equipment upgrades, patches, and repairs, discovery of new seismic-related problems (e.g. in fire protection), and reanalysis will continue for the foreseeable future, with no full resolution of the structural stability of PF-4 in the event of a design-basis earthquake.
The PF-4 laboratory floor and roof are held up by about 32 columns, which run from the foundation to the roof. Seismic failure of any one column will lead to the failure of all, "like a zipper" as then DNFSB board member John Mansfield once colorfully explained.
What this WSR explains is that it took LANL three (3) years to finally award a contract to test the capitals of these columns and also to conduct a non-linear dynamic analysis of PF-4 under design-basis conditions, and that it will take 3 years to complete this work.
In other words LANL and NNSA will not know, until at least the end of 2021, whether PF-4 will withstand a design-basis earthquake.
If further structural improvements are warranted, these can be explored sometime after the non-linear dynamic analysis is completed (i.e. in 2022). At present the necessity, feasibility, program impact, and cost of any such enhancements are unknown.
This WSR also mentions the process by which critical scope is being added back into the Transuranic Waste Facility after being removed. As far as we know this was done in order to make the project appear successful and avoid loss of prime contractor fee and award term. Full functionality not yet, and may never be, achieved at this facility.
This WSR documents the following PF-4 schedule slippages relative to baseline projections. DNFSB's bullets:
- 11 years for the upgrade of the fire suppression system to seismic performance category (PC)-3, now estimated for completion in FY-24
- 6 years to complete modifications to ensure laboratory walls provide a 2-hour fire barrier, now estimated for completion in FY-21
- 5 years to achieve a PC-3 active confinement ventilation capability and replace the fire alarm system, now both estimated for completion in FY-25
- 4 years to separate the non-seismically qualified buildings from the firewater loop, now estimated for completion in FY-26
Don't you find all this shocking? Even if we all knew nothing else, how could we consider loading up LANL, including PF-4, with industrial plutonium missions?
Please note that these are, or point to, serious, long-term, pervasive LANL management problems. Some, but only some, are engineering problems related to a particular building at LANL, PF-4.
2. The Los Alamos Monitor published the guest column sent previously: Why LANL cannot host a plutonium pit factory, Mello, Los Alamos Monitor, Jan 13, 2019.
3. In a widely-shared Bulletin ("Why LANL cannot be any kind of plutonium factory") we brought up other issues that didn't fit in the guest column:
- LANL's dissected, steep topography, which dramatically increases costs and places firm limits on construction at TA-55 and elsewhere at LANL
- The site’s industrial, cultural, and educational isolation, which increases costs and creates program risks in multiple ways;
- LANL's R&D culture and identity, necessary to protect (and project) in order to attract young scientists and engineers to the “weapons of mass destruction business,” especially given LANL's isolated location; LANL’s basic identity is not and cannot be one of a safe, high-hazard, high-reliability industrial facility;
- LANL's culture is grandiose; its leaders typically arrogant; its scientific staff typically exhibit a sense of entitlement; these are products of: LANL’s nuclear weapons mission and its lack of accountability; its secrecy; its isolation; its relatively high formal educational attainment in comparison to the surrounding counties; its large salaries and generous benefits; its relatively low taxes, splendid local government finances and excellent schools, and much else of genuine community accomplishment and value relative to its New Mexico surround; in short LANL is a very big dog in a very small park; the point being that LANL’s culture is one where “delusional optimism” (Flyvbjerg) and “normal accidents” (Perrow) have thrived, again for fundamental reasons;
- A political environment conducive to corruption (see here and here, to pick examples from the press almost at random) partly of LANL’s own making as we see in the case of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC), again contributing to a lack of accountability;
- A very high incidence of drug use and associated crime linked to systemic poverty and inequality (“the aura of apartheid”) in the region: Rio Arriba County, 89.9 deaths per 100,000 per year (age-adjusted, 2012-2016), 5.5x the US average of 16.4; Santa Fe County, 32.3 per 100,000 per year, double the national average; Los Alamos County, 16 per 100,000 per year, the national average; Taos County, 32.1 per 100,000 per year; New Mexico overall, 24.6 deaths per 100,000 per year.
- The relative lack of a qualified regional workforce and relative lack of post-secondary educational and vocational institutions in the region;
- The reality of prior and current living Pueblo traditions and religious claims to so-called “LANL” lands and waters; and
- The incompatibility of industrial plutonium operations with powerful local cultural aspirations and values.
4. In sum, we think it will be more than just “very difficult,” or “risky,” for LANL to establish reliable, enduring industrial plutonium missions, including industrial pit production at any scale. We think it will be impossible.
As we said in the Monitor op ed, NNSA and DoD have little choice but to use LANL for “technology transfer” of the pit production mission to the Savannah River Site (SRS) as fast as possible. What NNSA’s AoA and EA, and the facts on the ground, have made clear is that there is no real decision to make. For industrial pit production LANL can only be, at best, a training site.
Even this role will be fraught with problems.
A lot of people haven’t figured this out yet.
We think NNSA has no viable options for significant stockpile pit production in the 2020s. Do you see any?
NNSA almost certainly cannot meet its 2030 deadline for an operational 80 ppy capability. If there is a chance to meet that (needless!) deadline, it lies with a refurbished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS.
Even if one invested several billion dollars in construction at LANL, it is completely unclear how any reliable or enduring pit production capability could emerge.
Best wishes,
Greg Mello
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