The federal agency that oversees the country’s nuclear weapons has issued a preliminary notice of violation to Los Alamos National Laboratory’s primary contractor for safety lapses that occurred in 2021.

Triad National Security, which oversees the lab’s operations, was cited for four mishaps at the plutonium facility that raised alarm bells at the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department branch.

They involved two water spills, a breached glove box that contaminated the skin of three workers and the improper placement of fissionable material into a drop box. Fissionable means it’s capable of reaching a nuclear reaction.

Agency Administrator Jill Hruby expressed in a letter to lab Director Thom Mason, who heads Triad, that the incidents were considered serious violations.

“The National Nuclear Security Administration considers this series of nuclear safety events to be serious and to have high safety significance,” Hruby wrote on May 18.

These incidents showed deficiencies in work processes, management, quality improvement and criticality safety requirements, she wrote.

Criticality is the state in which radioactive elements can sustain a nuclear reaction.

Although the incidents prompted enforcement action, the agency isn’t imposing any civil penalties because the deficiencies already contributed to Triad losing $1.4 million in contract fees on a yearly evaluation, Hruby wrote.

Triad must file a written reply in 30 days or face a “default order,” Hruby wrote. The agency will review Triad’s reply and proposed corrective actions and determine if anything further is required to ensure the contractor is complying with safety requirements, Hruby wrote.

When asked why the violation notice took two years to issue, Millicent Mike, an agency spokeswoman, replied in an email that this is the typical timeframe to make such assessments.

On Feb. 11, 2021, Triad did not confirm fissionable material placed in a drop box complied with the safety posting. As a result, the material exceeded the posted criticality safety limits.

On March 3, 2021, a worker did not conduct required self-monitoring after pulling out from the gloves attached to the sealed compartment in which radioactive material is handled. As a result, the worker didn’t recognize a breached glove nor the contamination on his hands, and then spread it to co-workers.

On March 31, 2021, Triad did not inform the operations center the lab’s vault baths — used to cool certain plutonium containers — needed filling. The second mistake occurred when a worker jammed open a spring-closed valve, bypassing a safety feature, and then left for another task.

Water poured through the valve, causing the baths to overflow. An alarm went off, but it failed to transmit to the operations center, whose personnel were unaware the baths were being filled. The overflow wasn’t discovered for several hours, and by then, 1,800 gallons had spilled.

On July 19, 2021, Triad assigned unqualified workers to fill the vault baths who turned the valves in the wrong sequence. Misaligned valves caused water to spill onto the floor and flow into an air vent and a glove box on a lower floor.

These workers also didn’t inform the operations center they were filling vault baths.

The accompanying report not only recounts what went wrong but analyzes how corrective actions were flawed, such as not fixing equipment known to be faulty, which increased the chance of the mishap recurring.

Managers placed too much of the blame on workers rather than looking at systemic problems and defective equipment, which could be the real cause, the report said.

These managers “routinely focus on human errors rather than the conditions that make those errors more likely,” it said.

A longtime lab critic who read the report said the nuclear security agency appeared to have ferreted out the incidents in which Triad failed to correct the underlying causes.

“I would speculate that NNSA feels it has to send a message to Triad,” said Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

The trouble is the agency gives the lab and the contractor mixed signals — pressing them to be safe while moving faster toward producing 30 plutonium pits a year for warheads, Mello said, adding that it’s difficult to do both.

“There’s too much going on,” Mello said. “And they have a personnel crisis.”

Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the violations show for the “umpteenth time” the hazards of expanded pit production at the lab.

“Expanded plutonium pit production at LANL should be stopped until proven safe,” Coghlan said.

In the glove box breach, the report notes the worker was assigned several different roles, including operator, escort, person in charge and trainer.

At least one serious incident in 2021 wasn’t written up in the notice: flawed packing of radioactive waste that caused sparks to fly from a container at the lab.

HEPA filters containing titanium welding shards were stuffed in a plastic bag, then placed with a metal object in a drum. The metal item tore the plastic, and the air entering the ripped bag oxidized the titanium, igniting sparks.

Mike wrote the incident wasn’t within the scope of the violation notice.

“DOE and NNSA take all variances from normal operations seriously, though not all rise to the level of requiring enforcement action,” Mike wrote.