what the world needs now?

What a quaint idea from the old days. No, you know what we need now in the USA? We need to keep making the pits that power nuclear weapons. In fact we need to spend $6 billion dollars that we don't have on a plutonium lab, and we need to build said expensive plutonium lab on an earthquake fault. Damn fucking straight.

 http://timirving.blogspot.com/2010/08/nikon-f2-style-icon-yeah-baby.html

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG????

Ideas brought to you by the same government that in 2004 decided that, rather than waiting for nature to spawn a deadly mutant flu virus, they should create one in the lab "IN THE NAME OF PREPAREDNESS."

Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.

Of course, not to digress or anything, but they did this in a BSL-3 lab (that means extra super-duty safe lab), but somehow the work was contracted out to another lab and the safety precautions went out the window. Oopsie! Regrettable.

There might have been a little Human Error involved.

Anyway that was a long time ago and nobody remembers these things because five billion other horrible things happened in the meantime. But it DID happen and it WAS brushed under the rug.

We note the PATTERN.

Getting back to the plutonium lab...at Los Alamos, NM.

The lab is called the CMRR: Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement facility. It has been in progress for three decades, but now the final design plans are being discussed.

The authorities know that the area is prone to major earthquakes.

They say they need the lab to replace the 1940s-era Plutonium Facility (PF-4), which is the only building in the US equipped to make the pits of nuclear weapons. Other work to be done there is, of course, CLASSIFIED.

Do we really need a facility to make more nuclear weapons and conduct more classified research into radiation? Do we really need a facility like that built on in an earthquake-prone area?

The authorities have studied radiation for many decades. What more do they need to know? They have experimented on humans without their consent.

They know about the Petkau effect. 

For scientists, the Petkau Effect may be illustrated as follows:

A long term exposure of extremely low radiation (i.e., one-ten millionth of a rad per minute) was found to be 100 BILLION times MORE lethal than a short term exposure to exceedingly high level radiation (i.e., 10,000 rads per minute). As it turns out, Petkau discovered that at exceedingly high radiation levels, the abundant free radicals generated in tissues tended to cancel each other out before they could do cellular damage. But at extremely low levels of radiation, these same free radicals - produced in minuscule quantities - remain unchecked. And any steady stream of unchecked free-radicals will efficiently and lethally cleave lipid cellular membranes like a hot knife slicing through butter once they overwhelm and exhaust cellular antioxidant defenses. This dramatically illustrates the non-linear aspects of dose (rads) to lethality. Most scientists specializing in the field of nuclear medicine are unaware of this fact. And most think strictly in terms of genetic damage, while the above presents its lethal affects upon cell membranes and only secondarily to the genetic core.

We are already immersed in a radioactive environment.

The DOE has an administrative body, the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), responsible for overseeing the nation's nuclear labs. The NNSA has gone to great lengths to ensure that the lab will be safe up to an earthquake of 7.3 magnitude.

The chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, appointed by Congress to oversee the nation's nuclear facilities, is Peter Winokur (no relation to Pug Winokur of Enron infamy, as far as we can tell, although Winokur is not a common name -- Ashkenazic for distiller).

"The board believes that no safety issue problem in (the nation's nuclear complex) is more pressing than the plutonium facility's vulnerability to a large earthquake." ~ Peter Winokur

The board is not concerned as long as the construction plans are followed through.

IN OTHER WORDS, we have to trust the people at Los Alamos and the construction firms to build the facility to the highest standards.

What is the pattern? Well, why is our planet already polluted with radiation, among other things?

^^^^^^^


We note a pattern of very serious problems being ignored.

January 26, 2006, a letter to Mr. Eggenberger, Mr. Winokur's predecessor, inquiring about 300KG of missing plutonium:

IEER found that, according to the Department of Energy’s own documents, there is at a minimum 300 kilograms of plutonium that is not accounted for in the nuclear materials safeguards account of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Given that this large amount of unaccounted plutonium could present national security, public health and environmental threats, we are writing to request that you open an immediate investigation into plutonium accounting at LANL.

...The Department of Energy has known about the discrepancy in plutonium accounts at LANL since 1996 (please see enclosed DOE memo). DOE even set up a “working group” to address plutonium accounting discrepancies at all of its sites (LANL has by far the largest discrepancy), which achieved no apparent results. In August 2004, IEER and other organizations wrote to LANL Director Pete Nanos urging him to address the issue, but there was no substantive response. While the DOE promised a response when the IEER report was released in late November 2005, the subsequent public statement was similar to the prior dismissive ones. Whether or not DOE and LANL address this vital issue, we believe it is essential that the DNFSB undertake an immediate, independent investigation of the unaccounted plutonium, given the large quantity involved.

...CC: U.S. Senator Pete Domenici
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman
U.S. Representative Tom Udall
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry
DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman
NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks
NNSA Los Alamos Site Office Manager Ed Wilmot

See the historical documents:


January 30, 1996 memorandum outlining the discrepancies of nuclear waste

August 10, 2004 IEER memo to the director of LANL, following up on the discrepancies

The huge discrepancy at LANL is especially troubling and puzzling because Los Alamos was not continuously an industrial-scale production site. If the LANL number is anywhere close to correct, then there may be very serious implications regarding the lack of due care in minimizing losses of an extremely expensive, proliferation-sensitive, and dangerous material.
On the other hand, if the 1,375 kilograms that is now booked as waste is not, in fact, in the waste, the security implications are obvious. They are at least as serious as those of loss of nuclear weapon design information. As you know, the difficulty of obtaining fissile materials is generally considered the most important barrier to proliferation.
As the Guimond-Beckner memorandum states, Secretary O'Leary set up a working group to address the issue and urged individual sites to do so as well. The DOE working group seems to have melted away in the bureaucracy. To the best of our knowledge, LANL has yet to explain the large plutonium accounting discrepancy or address its security implications.
It is completely unacceptable for a discrepancy of 150 bombs worth of plutonium to remain on the books eight years after it was first discovered. We hope that you agree.

Yes, by all means, PLEASE KEEP TRACK OF THE PLUTONIUM. THANKS!

Refresh your memory about plutonium.

Plutonium, a man-made material, has a half life of 24,000 years. A single plutonium particle, if ingested particularly inhaled, will kill you from the inside by bombarding your body with radioactivity. Of course you won't know. You'll get sick over a period of time. You'll never know that you ingested a plutonium particle that gave you cancer because the particles are invisible. Good luck. By the way, essentially all plutonium on earth has been CREATED by MEN in LABORATORIES. Regrettably, they don't keep close track of the plutonium, and at least 300KG have been missing for several decades. Oops.

Et cetera.

Should you worry about them building a new plutonium lab on top of an earthquake fault? Or has the horse already left the barn?

^^^^^^^

How about the construction?

We note a pattern of poor oversight and relaxed standards.

November 30, 2007, POGO letter to DOE Under Secretary Thomas D’Agostino requesting a stop work order for the CMRR at Los Alamos due to construction concerns:

I am writing to you to suggest NNSA immediately issue a stop-work order on the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement (CMRR) program. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has learned that Austin Commercial of Dallas, TX, the contractor hired for building the first stage of the CMRR, is not building the facility to ASME NQA-1 Quality Assurance (QA) standards for nuclear facilities, nor to other DOE QA requirements.  In fact, Austin Commercial is allegedly demanding an increase in their fixed fee from $10 million to $30 million if they are expected to meet these QA standards, and are even threatening taking Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to court. Did LANL actually enter into a contract that did not spell out these requirements?

Furthermore, POGO has learned that Austin Commercial already poured over 100 cubic yards of defective concrete that was out of spec because there was too much air in the concrete.  This error was discovered and rejected by LANL QA personnel. 

Let's pause right there and recall the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant that was threatened by the Missouri River floods this past spring. We learned that radiation makes concrete brittle.

Then we have the small problem of the cozy relationship between the nuclear industry and the nuclear industry regulators, and the consequences of that: WEAKENED SAFETY STANDARDS.


Records show a pattern of plants falling out of compliance. Studies ensue. The studies find the standards overly conservative. Authorities loosen the standards. The plants then come back into compliance. For example, radiation makes concrete brittle. The US Nuclear Regulatory Authority set a "reference temperature" benchmark of 200 degrees Fahrenheit to predict the threshold that the concrete vessel housing radioactive fuel could break apart. The standard today: up to 356 degrees Fahrenheit.

...The records show a pattern. You don't have to be a scientist, or an engineer, or any sort of specialist to see that these PATTERNS of behavior tend to repeat, and these PATTERNS of behavior tend to results in people dying, which is then deemed regrettable. And we have discussed these patterns many, many times, but if we were to pick one post as a reference, we think this one does the trick: getting away with murder.

So have these concrete issues been resolved? The NNSA says they were resolved. What more could you ask for?

There were some discrepancies early in the pour cycle, and these discrepancies were resolved. All completed concrete confonns to the approved RLUOB Design and associated QA requirements. To date, a total of 6,800 cubic yards of concrete have been placed of the total 16,800 cubic yards.

Everything is under control! All the best people are on the job, making sure that everything is done to the highest quality standards. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to worry about. Major General Robert Smolen, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, said so. Go back to sleep.


POGO update today: High cost of under-the-radar nuke facility becoming hard to ignore

Largely flying under the radar of the general public since its inception as a $375-million facility in 2001, CMRR-NF has been championed by politicians like Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and has been the foe of organizations like the Los Alamos Study Group and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico.

We are not surprised at Mr. Kyl's support.

"Radiation exposure kills us. The sad truth about radiation. No level is safe and as the levels rise we see the impact for decades. Very seldom are the effects of radiation exposure seen immediately, unless the exposure is extreme. We pray for everyone in Japan  

and in the path of the radiation."

http://www.fukushimafew.com/how-much-radiation-is-safe/radiation_exposure_victim/

Who is in the path of radiation already?

EVERYONE.

But some people think we need more.

They're not satisfied yet.

They don't feel safe from the scary terrorists.

They want an expensive plutonium lab to make more weapons,

to do more classified research.

That would help them out so much.

You understand, right?