Editorial: Nuclear mistakes

Friday, Dec. 7, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

America's nuclear weapons labs have serious safety problems, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In a report issued last month, the GAO described a history of weak oversight by the National Nuclear Security Administration and a lax attitude toward safety at the labs. The report also said the labs had problems identifying and correcting safety problems, and noted the agency relied on contractors' safety programs instead of providing real oversight.

NNSA officials have acknowledged some problems and said they have improved oversight. But they also rationalized the report's findings, which since 2000 recorded 60 serious accidents and incidents, including a laser injury and the radiation of several workers.

"We take nuclear safety and worker safety very seriously," said agency spokesman John Broehm. "But when you look at the size and scope of what we do, we feel the numbers are pretty good."

The numbers may look good, but the reality is that safety violations found at nuclear weapons laboratories are exponentially more dangerous than typical industrial accidents. Because workers are dealing with nuclear material, mistakes can be catastrophic, with effects that spread well beyond a lab.

For example, in 2005 a worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory opened a package from another lab that contained radioactive material. The worker did not know for 11 days that he had contaminated himself. In that time, he contaminated other material that was sent to other facilities, his home, other places in Los Alamos and relatives' homes in Colorado and Kansas.

The GAO reported that the people who sent the worker the package thought he knew of the danger; he said he figured if it were dangerous, he would have been told.

The GAO blamed the problem on the "casual factor" in the lab regarding safety.

Instead of trying to defend a lousy record, the NNSA should put an end to this cavalier attitude and make safety a priority before the public gets hurt.