I'm submitting this based on the current top item "North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names" [0].
This accident was traced to a manager transcribing "inorganic absorbent" as "an organic absorbent". A more serious example of the need to have competent people with domain knowledge in the room and empowered when documents are written.
Not just when documents are written, but also when the practices they describe are implemented.
You don't need to know a lot of chemistry to realize that mixing organics with nitric acid is a bad idea. Why did none of the technicians doing the work say "hold on, this doesn't seem right"?
I'm surprised they made critical material purchasing decisions based on what some guy thinks he heard in a meeting, rather than official written documents written by and cross-checked by multiple engineers.
Thanks for highlighting that, I missed that in the video and was wondering why "anorganic" should be something different than "inorganic" (in my native German it's "anorganisch").
But still, I'm a bit alarmed that a trained nuclear technician would simply follow these instructions and mix organic material with acid without having any second thoughts about it...
I did a sort of internship at Los Alamos which involved building some drones. A year or two later I got a call from my advisor there, out of the blue asking me if I had anything immediately available that could do recon underground effectively. I didn't really, so I declined. I asked what they needed it for and he said it would be easier if I got the info from the news. That was kinda terrifying ... turned out to be this incident.
I went to school in New Mexico and had really mixed feelings about the culture around Los Alamos and Sandia.
There are a lot of brilliant people there both in terms of science and project management. However, the best person I knew got driven out. But I think also a lot of nepotism and a security clearance culture that filters out really interesting people and leaves behind the dangerously milquetoast.
>In July 2012, LANS issued Solution Package (SP) Report-72, Salt Waste (SP #72) (Revision 1)
to address the processing steps for nitrate salt drums. This document concluded that the
glovebox procedure must be revised or replaced to ensure that the final waste mixture meets or
exceeds 1.2:1 kitty litter/zeolite:nitrate salt as specified by May 8, 2012, LANL-CO white paper.
>In response to SP #72, LANS prepared a major revision to the glovebox operations procedure.
Section 10.6 was added to provide instructions for nitrate salt drum processing. Paragraph
10.6[3] stated “ensure an organic absorbent (Kitty Litter/Zeolite® absorbent) is added to the
waste material at a minimum of 1.5 absorbent to 1 part waste ratio.” The Board concluded that
specifying the use of “organic” absorbent and the omission of the word “clay” in the WCRRF
glovebox procedure was not consistent with the direction provided in the white paper.
I remember at the time there was also some concern that the swap had taken place due to a green initiative to use renewable sources rather than something that was mined. there were no sources to back that up except the fact that the organic litter is a little over double the cost of clay litter.
It was not sufficient to just write "inorganic". Given the seriousness of possible consequences, some redundancy should have been added. E.g. "inorganic mineral-based kitty litter can be used; organic kitty litter is not acceptable". A few more words would have prevented an actual nuclear incident.
“It’s almost unbelievable that we entrust ourselves - squishy, sometimes hapless bags of water, meat, and bones - to navigate protocols of such profound complexity needed to safely take advantage of radioactive materials.”
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like that all the time, not specifically about radioactive stuff, but about other highly complex and regulated environments where a simple mistake can have catastrophic consequences. As an example, just look at how the aerospace industry operates, there are so many talented scientists and engineers working in every aspect and yet many incidents take place every year due to trivial human errors, from pilots misunderstanding something to technicians not tightening a bolt enough.
Of course it’s not like we can trust anything (anyone?) else other than other humans to do this stuff, but it blows my mind how easily we forget about it.
I tried to commit documentation to our source repository; I was told to upload it to the documentation site instead.
The documentation site that we've used for one year, subsequent to the previous documentation site the we used for 3 years, subsequent to the previous documentation site that we used for 5 years.
Following the trend, by the end of this year we will migrate documentation every 5 minutes, degrading every time.
At least source code can be migrated with fidelity. (The main branch anyway)
This may be hijacking the thread,
but I had an interesting experience lately.
Bear with me,
Los Alamos National Laboratory is part of the story.
I'm a film photographer,
and I had been taking my color film to a lab to be processed and scanned.
A couple of months ago the lab let me know that the turnaround time for scanning would be a couple of weeks instead of a few days.
Some two months later,
I still had not gotten my film back.
I went to the lab and spoke with the owner,
and he said that LANL was sending him so much film to develop and scan that he couldn't get to his other customers,
and he expected that the volume would increase.
He was nice enough to give me my undeveloped film and and refund the prepaid bill.
I did not ask,
as I didn't want to piss of the owner,
but I have many questions.
Why is LANL sending so much film to a lab for developing?
Why can't LANL set up their own film developing and scanning lab,
it's not nuclear engineering,
it just requires some equipment and a little expertise.
Why now?
Why are the even using film these days?
Why did the lab's owner feel it necessary to prioritize LANL's business over others,
rather than putting it in the queue to wait its turn?
"Hot" nuclear waste means theres still a lot of energy left to capture. Why are we disposing of materials that still have a lot of energy to capture? Seems like the closer we get to lead, in terms of capture, the better.
It would be like taking my half-full of gas car to the pump, dumping the existing gas, and getting fresh. Its a waste of energy, waste of resources, and generates worse nuclear waste.
> It’s almost unbelievable that we entrust ourselves - squishy, sometimes hapless bags of water, meat, and bones - to navigate protocols of such profound complexity needed to safely take advantage of radioactive materials.
This type of thought rings more and more true to me as I grow older.
I'm submitting this based on the current top item "North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names" [0].
This accident was traced to a manager transcribing "inorganic absorbent" as "an organic absorbent". A more serious example of the need to have competent people with domain knowledge in the room and empowered when documents are written.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46492161
Not just when documents are written, but also when the practices they describe are implemented.
You don't need to know a lot of chemistry to realize that mixing organics with nitric acid is a bad idea. Why did none of the technicians doing the work say "hold on, this doesn't seem right"?
I'm surprised they made critical material purchasing decisions based on what some guy thinks he heard in a meeting, rather than official written documents written by and cross-checked by multiple engineers.
Thanks for highlighting that, I missed that in the video and was wondering why "anorganic" should be something different than "inorganic" (in my native German it's "anorganisch").
But still, I'm a bit alarmed that a trained nuclear technician would simply follow these instructions and mix organic material with acid without having any second thoughts about it...
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
... transcribing "inorganic absorbent" as "an organic absorbent"...
A literal, or literary, bit-flip.
I did a sort of internship at Los Alamos which involved building some drones. A year or two later I got a call from my advisor there, out of the blue asking me if I had anything immediately available that could do recon underground effectively. I didn't really, so I declined. I asked what they needed it for and he said it would be easier if I got the info from the news. That was kinda terrifying ... turned out to be this incident.
Internship started as this thing: https://youtu.be/hq03MsP1MPI?si=lVpDMLqRN4nfwMiA really great experience.
I went to school in New Mexico and had really mixed feelings about the culture around Los Alamos and Sandia.
There are a lot of brilliant people there both in terms of science and project management. However, the best person I knew got driven out. But I think also a lot of nepotism and a security clearance culture that filters out really interesting people and leaves behind the dangerously milquetoast.
Me too, phd at NM Tech. Loved being in Socorro. You?
Undergrad, Physics, class of '92. Did physics PhD at Cornell and wound up working as a software dev in the social science department!
Thesis topics? (either of you all)
More than just a typo:
>In July 2012, LANS issued Solution Package (SP) Report-72, Salt Waste (SP #72) (Revision 1) to address the processing steps for nitrate salt drums. This document concluded that the glovebox procedure must be revised or replaced to ensure that the final waste mixture meets or exceeds 1.2:1 kitty litter/zeolite:nitrate salt as specified by May 8, 2012, LANL-CO white paper.
>In response to SP #72, LANS prepared a major revision to the glovebox operations procedure. Section 10.6 was added to provide instructions for nitrate salt drum processing. Paragraph 10.6[3] stated “ensure an organic absorbent (Kitty Litter/Zeolite® absorbent) is added to the waste material at a minimum of 1.5 absorbent to 1 part waste ratio.” The Board concluded that specifying the use of “organic” absorbent and the omission of the word “clay” in the WCRRF glovebox procedure was not consistent with the direction provided in the white paper.
https://wipp.energy.gov/Special/AIB_WIPP%20Rad_Event%20Repor...
I remember at the time there was also some concern that the swap had taken place due to a green initiative to use renewable sources rather than something that was mined. there were no sources to back that up except the fact that the organic litter is a little over double the cost of clay litter.
It's not the litter, it's the typo.
It was not sufficient to just write "inorganic". Given the seriousness of possible consequences, some redundancy should have been added. E.g. "inorganic mineral-based kitty litter can be used; organic kitty litter is not acceptable". A few more words would have prevented an actual nuclear incident.
Love this part
“It’s almost unbelievable that we entrust ourselves - squishy, sometimes hapless bags of water, meat, and bones - to navigate protocols of such profound complexity needed to safely take advantage of radioactive materials.”
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like that all the time, not specifically about radioactive stuff, but about other highly complex and regulated environments where a simple mistake can have catastrophic consequences. As an example, just look at how the aerospace industry operates, there are so many talented scientists and engineers working in every aspect and yet many incidents take place every year due to trivial human errors, from pilots misunderstanding something to technicians not tightening a bolt enough.
Of course it’s not like we can trust anything (anyone?) else other than other humans to do this stuff, but it blows my mind how easily we forget about it.
"Wrong Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe"
As an owner of a particularly opinionated Orange Cat, I can relate.
I had my thesis experiment stranded at WAIS due to this incident. The good thing is I didn't have to go to WAIS ever again...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge
Well, I knew what I meant.
I tried to commit documentation to our source repository; I was told to upload it to the documentation site instead.
The documentation site that we've used for one year, subsequent to the previous documentation site the we used for 3 years, subsequent to the previous documentation site that we used for 5 years.
Following the trend, by the end of this year we will migrate documentation every 5 minutes, degrading every time.
At least source code can be migrated with fidelity. (The main branch anyway)
Who me? Bitter and scarred not at all!
This may be hijacking the thread, but I had an interesting experience lately. Bear with me, Los Alamos National Laboratory is part of the story.
I'm a film photographer, and I had been taking my color film to a lab to be processed and scanned. A couple of months ago the lab let me know that the turnaround time for scanning would be a couple of weeks instead of a few days. Some two months later, I still had not gotten my film back. I went to the lab and spoke with the owner, and he said that LANL was sending him so much film to develop and scan that he couldn't get to his other customers, and he expected that the volume would increase. He was nice enough to give me my undeveloped film and and refund the prepaid bill.
I did not ask, as I didn't want to piss of the owner, but I have many questions. Why is LANL sending so much film to a lab for developing? Why can't LANL set up their own film developing and scanning lab, it's not nuclear engineering, it just requires some equipment and a little expertise. Why now? Why are the even using film these days? Why did the lab's owner feel it necessary to prioritize LANL's business over others, rather than putting it in the queue to wait its turn?
Today I learned of the existence of "organic, wheat-based cat litter"
I keep asking this question:
"Hot" nuclear waste means theres still a lot of energy left to capture. Why are we disposing of materials that still have a lot of energy to capture? Seems like the closer we get to lead, in terms of capture, the better.
It would be like taking my half-full of gas car to the pump, dumping the existing gas, and getting fresh. Its a waste of energy, waste of resources, and generates worse nuclear waste.
> It’s almost unbelievable that we entrust ourselves - squishy, sometimes hapless bags of water, meat, and bones - to navigate protocols of such profound complexity needed to safely take advantage of radioactive materials.
This type of thought rings more and more true to me as I grow older.
Kinda cool how the safety system seemed to work
Not really a catastrophe, more like “problem”.
this really needs a TLDR
after reading a summary, this title is very click-baity
The title reads like "a cat got into a nuclear plant, got contaminated in a and spread radioactivity with cat litter stuck to its paws"