Los Alamos National Laboratory can't safely continue working overtime to meet new nuclear-trigger production schedules, an employee of the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board told the panel this week.

Lab officials say a lax attitude about safety procedures, aging buildings and trouble hiring federal oversight workers could jeopardize those who help produce the triggers.

The board held public hearings at Los Alamos High School on Wednesday to assess safety protocols at the national laboratory. Board members asked their staff, lab personnel and National Nuclear Security Administration staff to report on progress toward recommendations the board made to NNSA on Feb. 1.

"NNSA and LANL met pit delivery milestones in (fiscal year 2007) primarily through expanded-hours operations in existing facilities," said Dr. Charles Keilers, a safety-board staff member.

"The key facilities are three to six decades old and they have not been maintained over the years to support continuing at the '07 pace, much less expanding operations," Keilers concluded.

Lab director Michael Anastasio said he is pleased with progress — but not with the speed of progress — that Los Alamos National Security has made toward resolving what members of the nuclear-facilities safety board called ongoing and systemic safety problems.

Los Alamos National Security is a for-profit consortium, including Bechtel National Inc., the University of California, BWX Technologies Inc. and the Washington Group International, that took over operation of LANL last year. University of California had operated the lab since shortly after the World War II Manhattan Project.

Anastasio said the lab produced 11 plutonium pits this year, one of which was certified and installed in a nuclear weapon. It was the lab's first certified pit produced since 1989, he said. Plutonium pits are used to trigger nuclear explosions.

Los Alamos National Security implemented a new safety strategy after it took over last year, Anastasio said. He credited the company with reducing key safety indicators, including incident reports, by 30 percent.

"Interesting metrics," Anastasio told the board, "... but all of them are metrics about things that have happened, not something that might happen."

The lab director cited safety-related incidents that have stopped operations in the past year. One led to the temporary shutdown of an area processing high-level nuclear waste for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad.

On Oct. 2, workers at a LANL waste-assessment facility discovered what could have been unvented hydrogen inside a container being prepared for shipment. Realizing the facility was not equipped to vent the potentially explosive gas, they shut it down, said James Rickman, a LANL spokesman. Neither that incident, two January glove-box accidents where workers were exposed to plutonium in cuts or events related to a recent "preventative" shutdown of the plutonium-production facility resulted in off-site hazards, Rickman said.

The lab has since resumed shipments of some 2,000 barrels of high-level radioactive waste stored at Area G, adjacent to San Ildefonso Pueblo, NNSA deputy administrator William Ostendorf told the board.

Shipments of existing high-level waste had been scheduled for completion by January, but are now not expected until at least March, officials said.

Federal plans to consolidate storage of nuclear materials, including highly radioactive waste, have led to removal of about 10 percent of the above-ground, high-level waste at Area G, but "the total remains roughly unchanged," Keilers told the board. The reason, he said, is because LANL is making radioactive waste about as fast as it is shipping it off site, largely to support renewed plutonium-pit production.

Workers have finished removing plutonium238 residues from a storeroom that was the scene of an accident in 2003, but contents of another 1,600 barrels similar to one involved in the accident still need to be repackaged. For some of the barrels, insufficient liquid-waste treatment facilities will delay start of the five-year repackaging project until 2008, Keilers said.

In its Feb. 1 letter to the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the safety board, which acts in an advisory capacity, asked the NNSA to:

• Increase federal oversight of LANL.
• Improve "safety bases" — the core safety documents for high-risk facilities.
• Develop institutional safety programs.
• Eliminate known hazards.
• Increase federal management of new projects.

Four new NNSA facilities representatives at the local office will allow federal overseers to work "back-shift" hours at the plutonium facility, said Donald Winchell, NNSA's top local official. Anastasio said Los Alamos National Security has completed seven safety plans for critical facilities and has four to go, not including one for the troubled, 55-year-old Chemical and Metallurgy Research building. Keilers said safety plans for that and two other key facilities haven't been updated in about 10 years.

Keilers said NNSA moved in 2006 to increase federal oversight at LANL, but abandoned the effort this year in favor of a "contractor assurance program" favored by Los Alamos National Security. Keilers said that program would not be fully implemented for at least three years.

In a draft environmental impact statement, NNSA has asked to produce as many as 50 plutonium pits at LANL each year. Rickman said in an e-mail the lab is scheduled to produce 10 a year, and that "The budget for pit manufacturing includes funding to perform the work safely."

Contact David Collins at 986-3064 or dcollins@sfnewmexican.com.