The University of California-operated Los Alamos National
Laboratory, which is currently being considered for new management,
has seen another series of mishaps this summer that could be
potentially damaging to the university’s bid position.
The most recent incident resulted in the hospitalization of one
employee.
In June, two employees at Los Alamos inhaled toxic fumes. One
spent six days in the hospital in July after suffering prolonged
respiratory symptoms, while the other experienced temporary
shortness of breath.
Breaking with protocol, lab management was not informed of the
incident until Aug. 3, more than a month and a half after it had
occurred.
The workers were mixing concentrated nitric and hydrochloric
acids to form a corrosive liquid used in etching and certain
analytic procedures.
The details of the case are still under investigation, said lab
spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas in an earlier press release.
One lab employee has been put on leave pending the
investigation’s outcome.
Such problems at the lab are a cause of concern for the
university.
“This is an isolated, not systemic, incident. … We are
clearly concerned that proper procedures and policies are
followed,” said Chris Harrington, a UC spokesman.
This incident was not the first time an employee has been
injured at Los Alamos.
On May 27, a post-doctoral researcher and an undergraduate
student suffered injuries when a beaker exploded in the lab.
In this accident, both lab workers were said to have been
following procedure, and both UC and Los Alamos officials emphasize
the importance of safety at the labs.
“The safety of individuals at this laboratory is
paramount,” said Los Alamos Director Robert Kuckuck.
Kuckuck reminded lab employees that they have the right and
responsibility to stop working if they feel that conditions are
hazardous.
The accidents come at a particularly sensitive time, with the
future management of the lab up in the air.
The lab has been managed by the UC since it was established in
1943, but problems such as the misappropriating of funds, missing
inventory and misplaced classified data led the U.S. Department of
Energy to put the management contract up for bid for the first time
in the lab’s history.
Accidents may jeopardize UC’s opportunity to continue
managing the laboratory, and it was these types of problems that
caused the DOE to put the management contract up for competition
originally.
In July 2004, an intern’s eye was damaged during an
accident involving a laser, and there was a great deal of
controversy surrounding two missing disks, which it turned out
never existed.
The FBI became involved because the disks supposedly had
classified information. Several employees lost their jobs, and all
work on classified information was halted for seven months.
At the time, Pete Nanos, the director of Los Alamos, and Robert
Foley, the UC vice president of lab management, said the incident
did not occur because the lab’s system for tracking
classified material had failed, but that employees deliberately
ignored security procedures.
The retirement rate at the UC-run facility is at an all-time
high, with many capable employees leaving the lab, said James
Rickman, a Los Alamos spokesman.
Rickman said he thinks dramatic increase in retirement could be
caused by the uncertainty of the future of the lab, and whether the
options and benefits offered in the current UC retirement packages
would change if another competitor won the bid.
The university has continually been optimistic about the outcome
of the contract competition and has said it has fixed the problems
that allowed the July 2004 errors to occur.
But the recent incidents at the lab may call the
university’s optimism into question, and the UC’s
competitor, the University of Texas, is also confident about the
quality of its proposal and its chances of winning the bid.