An independent oversight agency wants to see improved safety systems at the facility at the heart of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit mission: PF-4.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board reported what it believes to be gaps in a safety analysis drafted for PF-4 and delays in upgrades to safety systems in a letter last month to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
“Maintaining momentum for these safety infrastructure projects is more important in light of the issues with the safety analysis,” the board wrote in the letter dated Oct. 10. It was signed by former acting chairman Thomas Summers.
The board requested a briefing within the next year on the department’s efforts to improve safety at PF-4 and requested continued briefings on an annual basis until a to-do list of safety control projects is completed.
That list includes replacing the facility’s fire alarm system. In December 2024, after a small fire burned itself out in the facility overnight, a spokesperson for the lab told The New Mexican the new system would include additional smoke detectors and “alarm initiating devices.”
According to the letter, the board has been focused on safety at the lab’s plutonium facility, PF-4, for decades, identifying “significant public health and safety issues” along the way at the aging facility, which started operations in 1978.
In 2022, as the national laboratory ramped up for the production of plutonium pits — the trigger devices for nuclear weapons — Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board members questioned leaders at the lab and the National Nuclear Security Administration on safety issues, including protections against earthquakes.
The October letter acknowledges the Department of Energy has improved existing safety controls but points out that several safety infrastructure projects have been delayed.
“The Board’s staff appreciates that Plutonium Facility personnel are pursuing physical improvements to safety systems, including formally credited safety systems as well as other engineered systems that perform important safety functions,” the full report states. “However, the staff team notes that many of these projects have encountered delays for a variety of reasons, including inconsistent funding.”
One topic discussed at the 2022 hearing — the possibility of an earthquake igniting a fire at the facility — reappeared in the report. Currently, according to the report, the water supply for fire suppression systems is shared between PF-4 and other buildings in the technical area. Some of those buildings are nuclear, others aren’t.
If an earthquake struck and damaged supply lines to non-nuclear buildings, water could be kept from PF-4, the report states.
Work to correct that issue and establish another water source for non-nuclear buildings, initially expected to be completed in 2026, is ongoing.
“However, facility personnel stated that there were complications associated with the planned routing of the feed lines to the Plutonium Facility, which may cause delays,” the report states.
PF-4 isn’t the only aging facility in the nation’s nuclear enterprise. In 2019, LANL reported that about 40% of the buildings it uses were built before the 1970s. Earlier this year, Wright announced he was lifting “burdensome” permitting requirements in an effort to upgrade infrastructure at nuclear facilities, “some even dating back to the Manhattan Project.”
Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive direcor Jay Coghlan sees PF-4 as being a bigger scale — and having bigger risks — than the other aging buildings.
“PF-4 is not unique in being old,” Coghlan said. “However, PF-4 is totally unique in currently being the only facility that can process large amounts of plutonium … particularly including plutonium pit production. I think, in part, that’s why the Safety Board focuses more on PF-4 than, to my knowledge, than any other single individual facility.”