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| | | published Thursday, November 17, 2011 | 708 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
Nov 17, 2011
By John FleckFrom the Albuquerque Journal
Seismic upgrades to the building at Los Alamos National Laboratory used for plutonium manufacturing could cost $150 million to $300 million and take until 2020 to complete.
The spending and timeline was included in a September report from the lab’s federal managers to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which will gather today in Santa Fe for a lengthy hearing on safety at the nuclear weapons lab.
The lab’s Plutonium Facility will be at the top of the agenda, board chairman Peter Winokur said in a telephone interview.
Built in the 1970s, the Plutonium Facility is one of two large, aging buildings at the lab where plutonium work is done. The lab hopes to replace one, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building, while the second, the Plutonium Facility, is upgraded in order to continue operations.
The Plutonium Facility is at the heart of the lab’s future mission, as the only building in the United States equipped for manufacturing plutonium pits, the triggers at the heart of nuclear weapons. But growing concerns about its ability to withstand a worst-case earthquake have drawn increasing scrutiny from the Safety Board, established by Congress to provide independent oversight of the safety of U.S. nuclear weapons labs and plants.
In October 2009, the Safety Board issued a report saying that a worst-case earthquake and fire at the Plutonium Facility could release a lethal radiation dose.
In a Sept. 29 report to the Safety Board, the lab’s federal managers said major structural improvements designed to prevent portions of the building from falling down in an earthquake could be completed in the next year. Upgrades to the building’s internal fire suppression system, needed to ensure that it survives an earthquake intact, will not be completed until 2013, according to the report.
But improvements to the building’s ventilation system, needed to keep plutonium from escaping in an earthquake, will not be done until 2020, according to the report. That date and others could also slip if not enough money is available in the federal budget to do the work, according to the report.
The Safety Board’s hearing runs from 1-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy St. |
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