Nuke dismantling error nearly levels Amarillo

Post #275,955 by Silverlock 12/17/06 8:22:56 AM Reply	Nuke dismantling error nearly levels Amarillo An accident that occurred last year as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization charged Thursday. The Project on Government Oversight watchdog group said the "near miss," which led the Energy Department to fine the plant's operator $110,000, was caused in part by technicians at the plant being required to work up to 72 hours per week. [link\|http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/12/15/15pantex.html\|Link] ----------------------------------------- Draft Kucinich [link\|http://www.kucinich.us/bio.php\|now].
Post #275,956 by Another Scott 12/17/06 8:40:24 AM Reply	Remember the 1999 accident in Japan? [link\|http://www.uic.com.au/nip52.htm\|Tokaimura Criticality Accident]. Two people were killed in that case. Fortunately, it's pretty difficult to detonate a nuclear bomb. It's not all that difficult, though, to cause fatal radiation exposures and conventional explosive detonations when people don't follow standard procedures. It sounds like Pantex needs a thorough overhaul of its procedures and training. Cheers, Scott.
Post #276,003 by static 12/17/06 7:35:44 PM Reply	I recall an episode of Spooks about that. Spooks was a British spy drama, with considerably more 'realism' and less 'flash' than 007. The agents often impersonated and infiltrated various organisations in order to find information and sometimes particular people. Anyway. One episode, there was this 'module' (for want of a better word) containing nuclear waste. It was probably 8 ton or so. And it got hijacked and taken to a storage yard in a large fuel depot. The leader of the hijackers threatened to 'blow it up'. Thing was, see, that the transport module was sealed and required some extremely special tools to open. At first the spooks weren't too concerned as the hijackers were simply pasting plastic explosives on the outside of it. And then the spooks' nuclear expert noticed the fuel depot and said that whilst the module couldn't be harmed by mere explosives, if all that oil went up, 'the nuclear waste would get very angry'. Wade. "Don't give up!" [link\|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/\|blog] · [link\|http://yceran.org/\|website]
Post #276,166 by tuberculosis 12/19/06 6:24:58 PM Reply	Should have max hours limits for technicians, like crane operators, pilots, etc. Safety issue. 72 hours? Lame - hire more people. [link\|http://www.blackbagops.net\|Black Bag Operations Log] [link\|http://www.objectiveclips.com\|Artificial Intelligence] [link\|http://www.badpage.info/seaside/html\|Scrutinizer]
Post #276,168 by ChrisR 12/19/06 6:52:29 PM Reply	Think you have that reversed.... ...Amarillo has already been leveled - it's about as flat as possible. If anything, an explosion would add geographic features.

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