I would like to wait until all the facts come in.
Posted on 12/16/2006 7:11:23 PM PST by LibWhacker
WASHINGTON — An accident that occurred as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization charged Thursday.
The Project on Government Oversight said the "near miss" event, which led the Energy Department to fine the plant's operator $110,000, was due partly to requirements that technicians at the plant work up to 72 hours per week.
The Pantex plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, is the country's only factory for assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons.
The organization said it was told by unidentified experts who were "knowledgeable about this event" that the accident, in which an unsafe amount of pressure was applied to the warhead, could have caused the device to detonate.
The oversight project also released an anonymous letter, purportedly sent by Pantex employees, warning that long hours and efforts to increase output were causing dangerous conditions in the plant.
In a two-paragraph statement, BWX Technologies, the company that operates the Amarillo facility under a contract with the Energy Department, said it "takes seriously any employee concerns about safe operations" and was comparing statements in the anonymous letter "with the reality of day-to-day work."
BWX spokeswoman Erin Ritter declined to comment beyond the statement.
Julianne Smith, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, which owns the Pantex plant, declined to respond to safety complaints outlined in a letter from oversight project Executive Director Danielle Brian to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
However, records show that the department last month fined BWX $110,000 for the accident and another event involving the same warhead.
In a letter to Dan J. Swaim, BWX general manger of the plant, the Energy Department said the company had "significantly delayed" disclosing the incidents and then submitted a "factually inaccurate and incomplete" report.
The letter, signed by Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, did not say the incidents could have caused a nuclear detonation or what kind of warhead was being dismantled when they occurred.
It said that during three separate unsuccessful attempts to dismantle the warhead in March and April of last year, workers applied too much pressure to the device and a safety mechanism failed to work.
Oversight project investigator Peter Stockton, a former Energy Department official, said the device was a W56 warhead, with a yield of 1,200 kilotons, 100 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Nothing new about that in this day and age.
www.pogo.org is somewhat biased in their views.
Quite right. The high explosive trigger (which may be several tens of pounds, if not hundreds) is the real danger.
I would like to wait until all the facts come in.
Another Clinton legacy...
RElated article.
Last W56 Minuteman Warheads Dismantled, (June 29, 2006)
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/27-06292006-677660.html
The Energy Department said Thursday it has completed dismantling the last W56 warhead that for 30 years, beginning in the early 1960s, was the deadly core of the Minuteman I, and later the updated Minuteman II long-range missile.
"Dismantling the last W56 warhead shows our firm commitment to reducing the size of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest level necessary for national security needs," said Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Yes, highly doubtful, I agree. Also telling that few media outlets have run with it, despite being liberal as he**.
I smell bullsh!t. They don't just "go off".
""Pantex"... that's some woman-thing, right?"
It, and Amarillo, are located in the Texas panhandle. You decide.
What was meant by "detonate" was likely the HE trigger going off, not the whole thing detonating, I'm sure.
I agree with some other posters. I would consider the source, and this looks like BS.
Everybody knows you got to soak the hell out of'em.
In light of difficulties with stuck threads on the W56 warhead radiation case, the staff reviewed the W56 WSS for historical data that could provide insight on this problem. This review was augmented by observations of the staff and the Board’s outside expert of interactions between the W56 Project Team and Y-12 staff with expertise in bimetallic joints. The surveillance history summary in the WSS provides a list of Unsatisfactory Reports and SFIs and states that none of these were safety-related. This summary fails to disclose a worker safety issue related to a fire hazard that is documented in the Y-12 hazard analysis and could be relevant to safety at the Pantex Plant.
Given that the W56 was in the stockpile for more than 25 years, one would expect a historical overview of the type and characteristics of the tooling used during the life of the program. Archival information of this nature would have been helpful in safety reviews of the modern tooling developed under the SS-21 process for W56 dismantlement. In addition, any SFI reports of operational difficulties related to the bimetallic joint would have provided additional insight, even if they had not been classified as safety-related when they were written. Finally, a more thorough effort to document the experiences of Pantex Production Technicians would have been helpful in identifying potential pitfalls.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w56.htm
"and it will not explode with other than he non-nuclear high explosive in the weapon."
Of course, if you carelessly toss a lit cigarette and it hits that non-nuclear high explosive...;)
Unidentified kind of sums it up, my BS detector just went off.
Here's the problem
The Project On Government Oversight
A non-partisan non-profit government watchdog whose mission is to investigate, expose, and remedy abuses of power, mismanagement, and government ...
www.pogo.org/ - 30k - Cached - Similar pages
Yeah, but think of the benefits! If they are the only shop left, you don't have to worry about that "Oh, we were really looking for somebody with more experience" line when applying for that Nuclear Bomb Dismantler job."
Actually you can set this stuff on fire and it will just burn with an oily smoke. If you cover it however with anything, like sand or your foot, it will explode and leave quite a large hole in the ground and spread pieces of you over a large piece of landscape.
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