Santa Fe New Mexican, November 16, 2014

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Actor David Huddleston recalls a ‘Blazing’ career Sunday Spotlight, C-1

Man wanted in teens’ deaths nabbed in Colorado Local News, C-1

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Sunday, November 16, 2014

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A close-up photo of an unsealed waste container from LANL was taken May 22 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad. The container would not have met federal transportation standards to get on the road from Los Alamos to Carlsbad, nor would it have been accepted at WIPP, if the lab had reported its true ingredients.

fro m l anl t o lea k

Missteps and secrets

Courtesy U.S. Department of Energy

Documents show LANL officials downplayed dangers and withheld critical information after one of the lab’s drums caused leak at WIPP By Patrick Malone The New Mexican

I

n the summer of 2012, Gov. Susana Martinez visited the hilltop facilities of Los Alamos National Laboratory to commemorate a milestone. The lab, under an agreement with the state, had just shipped its 1,000th truckload of Cold War-era nuclear waste from the grounds of Los Alamos to a salt cavern deep under the Southern New Mexico desert. The achievement meant the lab was well on its way to meeting a June 30, 2014, deadline imposed by Martinez to remove radioactive gloves, machinery and other equipment left over from decades of nuclear weapons research. For Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private consortium that operates the lab, the stakes were high. Meeting the deadline would help it secure an extension of its $2.2 billion annual contract from the U.S. Department of Energy. But the following summer, workers packaging the waste came across a batch that was extraordinarily acidic, making it unsafe for shipping. The lab’s guidelines called for work to shut down while the batch underwent a rigid set of reviews to determine how to treat it, a time-consuming process that jeopardized the lab’s goal of meeting the deadline. Instead, the lab and its various contractors took shortcuts in treating the acidic nuclear waste, adding neutralizer and a wheat-based organic kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The combination turned the waste into a potential bomb that one lab chemist later characterized as akin to plastic explosives, according to a six-month investigation by The New Mexican. The lab then shipped a 55-gallon drum of the volatile material 330 miles to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only underground repository for nuclear waste, southeast of Carlsbad. Documents accompanying the drum, which were supposed to include a detailed description of its contents, were deeply flawed. They made no mention of the acidity or the neutralizer, and they mischaracterized the kitty litter as a clay-based material — not the more combustible organic variety that most chemists would have recognized as hazardous if mixed with waste laden with nitrate salts, according to interviews and a review of thousands of pages of documents and internal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. On Feb. 14, with the campaign to clear the waste from Los Alamos more than 90 percent complete, the drum’s lid cracked open. Radiation leaked into the air. Temperatures in the underground chamber soared to 1,600 degrees, threatening dozens of nearby drums. At least 20 workers were contaminated with what federal officials have described as low levels of radiation — though one worker has filed a lawsuit saying his health has drastically deteriorated due to radiation exposure. The facility, meanwhile, remains shut down as an estimated $500 million recovery effort expected to last several years gets underway, leaving thousands of containers of nuclear waste destined for WIPP stranded at national laboratories across the country. Documents and internal emails

Index

An explosive mixture The lab and its contractors took shortcuts in treating acidic nuclear waste, adding neutralizer and a wheat-based kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The volatile result was later characterized by one lab chemist as akin to plastic explosives, according to a six-month investigation by The New Mexican.

Hispanics flock to Pentecostal congregations Longtime Catholics increasingly leave to find a ‘spiritual awakening’ By Uriel J. Garcia The New Mexican

Santa Reyes, 44, left Mexico eight years ago for a better life in Santa Fe. Things didn’t go so well at first. Her husband started coming home late and drunk. Her 24-year-old son became addicted to cocaine. And her 18-year-old daughter got sick. Reyes couldn’t find economic, emotional or spiritual support anywhere. Four years ago, as she was desperately searching for her son — who often did not come home for days at a time — she walked into a local Pentecostal church. Members of the congregation invited her to stay for the service, and they prayed for her. Pentecostal churches are fundamentalist groups that emphasize a direct personal experience with God through the Holy Spirit. “I felt such a peace that I’ve never felt before,” Reyes said. “I started to cry a lot.” Like many Latin Americans, Reyes was raised Catholic. And like many thousands, she left the Church in search of spiritual awakening in a conservative Protestant

Please see FLOCK, Page A-5 The Rev. Omar Orozco is the leader of the Hispanic Protestant church Casa de Dios on Santa Fe’s south side. Luke E. Montavon The New Mexican

Oil company has eyes on African park’s resources By Jeffrey Gettleman The New York Times

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — The trouble started when a British company suddenly appeared in this iconic and spectacularly beautiful national park, prospecting for oil. Villagers who opposed the project were beaten up by government soldiers. A park warden, who tried to block the oil company, SOCO International, from building a cellphone tower in the park, was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s director nearly killed hours after he delivered a secret report on the oil company’s activities. Much like the fight over drilling on federal lands in the U.S., the struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic

Please see OIL, Page A-5

Pasapick www.pasatiempomagazine.com

Serenata of Santa Fe: ‘The Art of Bach’ show that even after the radiation leak, lab officials downplayed the dangers of the waste — even to the Carlsbad managers whose staff members were endangered by its presence — and withheld critical information from regulators and WIPP officials investigating the leak. Internal emails, harshly worded at times, convey a tone of exasperation with LANL from WIPP personnel, primarily employees of the

Calendar A-2 Classifieds E-8 Comics Inside Crossword E-14

Main office: 983-3303 Late paper: 986-3010 News tips: 986-3035

Department of Energy and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates the repository. Taken together, the documents provide a window into a culture of oversight at the lab that, in the race to clean up the waste, had so broken down that small missteps sometimes led to systemic problems.

Please see MISSTEPS, Page A-4

Family C-7 Lotteries A-2 Opinions B-1

On our website View more documents and emails from LANL at http:// www.santafe newmexican. com/special_ reports/from_ lanl_to_leak/

Today

3 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, 208 Grant Ave., $15-$30, 988-1234, ticketssantafe.org.

Obituaries Sanford Brickner, Nov. 12 Catlain E. Dearden, Nov. 6 Danca Dixon, 92, Nov. 12

Real Estate E-1 Sports D-1 Time Out E-14

Breaking news at www.santafenewmexican.com

Cold with snow showers. High 35, low 12. Page D-6

Eloyd L. Gonzales, 94, Nov. 8 Rose Dorothy Ringlero, Nov. 7 Page C-2

Six sections, 46 pages 165th year, No. 320 Publication No. 596-440


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