hillariously bad corporate practices of radioactive materials storage horror/com

[coppercone2]

I found this horror comedy on youtube, complete with storing nuclear bomb byproducts in cardboard boxes outside





Normally I don't get surprised by the chemical industry being a bunch of scum bags but for some reason I always figured the people making nukes would have their shit together 

The way this researcher puts it, it sounds like beavis and butthead were running the show there

[Mark]

Thanks for posting these.  Decades of inaction and stupid decisions whilst dealing with some of the most dangerous materials on the planet!

[coppercone2]

I honestly think they raise the bar when it comes to bad practice.

Usually its like some poorly engineered container that at least looks kinda good, people are too busy to measure it, etc.. this is like yea we got leaking plutonium, wait 5 years.

I watched alot of industrial disaster incidents and its like poor engineering, some gauge getting stuck, some safety procedure that kept getting in the way all the time... this one just seems different

There is another knee slapper if you care to find it, about a iron/steel casting factory. There was so much accumulating of iron dust in the ceiling and it would burn as it fell down, so weird little fires were standard procedure. The back and forth between the government and the factory is hilarious too, because its not like a 'we will at least make this thing look kind of logically good'.. more like when your mom tells you to do the dishes and you splash some water on them, or better yet urinate in the sink.

[Cyberdragon]

Mass Darwinization 101.

[tombi]

Interestingly the studies of cancer in the Colorado area don't show any significant increase around the plant. Is the exposure less than they claim or is the risk lower or is there some other factor at play?

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/news/rocky-flats-cancer-study

[schmitt trigger]

A couple of years ago, I read the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Full-Body-Burden-Growing-Nuclear/dp/0307955656/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539696976&sr=8-1&keywords=rocky+flats+book

It tells a first-hand account of what was like to live in the vicinity of this facility.

Also, if you would like to read a far more chilling account of nuclear accidents:

https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Schlosser-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/B00HTJT5HY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1539697231&sr=8-2&keywords=command+and+control+nuclear+weapons%2C+the+damascus+accident

[T3sl4co1l]

Still beats the Soviets -- they dumped waste directly into a lake, not even a clay-lined dump or anything, just a natural one.  Among other horrors...

Tim

[dmills]

The LANL review of criticality accidents is also interesting for the many, many ways to feed the fuckup fairy when it comes to this stuff.

There was a criticality due to contaminated vacuum pump oil (Yes, the mass in the oil was sufficient to take the container of pump oil critical).

One Soviet site is known to have had IIRC no less then three accidental criticality incidents in a YEAR, one of them in a rig intended to measure the chemistry to reduce the risk of such things...

Yes, duckies, when you change the geometry of the container holding the plutonium solution (say by tilting it) so that the stuff all runs to one side and the surface are a goes down, well, that would be known as an 'unfavourable configuration", it is generally a bad idea.
Yes, draining the vessel using a valve into 1L containers and moving them separately is slower then using a 25L drum, **BUT THERE WAS A REASON THE INSTRUCTIONS SAID TO DO IT THAT WAY**, some amazing stuff went on during the cold war on both sides of the curtain. 

There is also a most amusing back and forth between the airfarce and the national lab concerning the cleanup after a fire in a missile silo that destroyed the warhead, with the airface trying to get the national lab to classify the concrete rubble based on its **AVERAGE** contamination, and the national lab pointing out that there would be bits **MUCH** hotter then average as something like 100g or so of special material was unaccounted for.

Some of the old public documents are fascinating.

Regards, Dan.

[schmitt trigger]

There is a saying that the only nuclear casualties during the cold war, were those of the workers related to all the different aspects of its manufacture and use.

Dan; the criticallity incident in the Soviet Union that you refer to, was that the Mayak one?

[dmills]

I would have to check, but that sounds right.

I also seem to recall at least one or two accidental PU bomb core criticality events in the soviet union which did not make that list, dangerous shit to play with.

It was surprising how many of these prompt criticalities had the operators walk away with non lethal doses, it didn't always pan out that way, but a surprisingly high percentage of the time the guys who were working on the thing took modest doses.

Regards, Dan.

[N2IXK]

There is another knee slapper if you care to find it, about a iron/steel casting factory. There was so much accumulating of iron dust in the ceiling and it would burn as it fell down, so weird little fires were standard procedure. The back and forth between the government and the factory is hilarious too, because its not like a 'we will at least make this thing look kind of logically good'.. more like when your mom tells you to do the dishes and you splash some water on them, or better yet urinate in the sink.

That would be this one:



The other videos posted under that account are WELL worth watching if you want to see a huge range of "how not to do it" as applied to toxic chemicals and industrial safety practices.

Of course, our beloved president is planning on "Making America Great Again", by eliminating the agency responsible for investigating these incidents and publishing this information:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/trump-said-to-again-propose-eliminating-chemical-safety-board

[T3sl4co1l]

I've binged a few of those videos... they're not quite a mystery as they unravel smoothly throughout the video, but you get that creeping sense of dread.

How about the rural gas station one?  You'll be screaming at your monitor, "run away!"

Remember, Every safety regulation is there because someone died to teach us that lesson.

Tim

[chickenHeadKnob]

You folks are forgetting the  country of Japan which has a proud legacy of nuc-cluster-phucks. On the way to creating godzilla and rodan we have of course Fukushima but also the lesser known:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident which is the Japanese equivalent to Rocky Flats. Also there is the fast breeder sodium cooled Monju reactor which made a grand total of 1 hour worth of power before decommissioning.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant 

[Mr. Scram]

It'd be hard to do worse if you tried. I'm a bit baffled how this could continue this long. When you have a restaurant, you get regular health inspections. When you have a nuclear weapons facility, nobody seems to ever check in on what the hell you're doing there? Even a cursory or superficial inspection would have revealed the many issues. I don't think I can blame just the plant management when there apparently is no system of accountability in this sector at all. Not to mention another party took over the plant and saw no issue with how things were looking and being done.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Who *chooses* to become a nuclear weapons designer? A psychopath?

[Cyberdragon]

Who *chooses* to become a nuclear weapons designer? A psychopath?

Smart people who have extreme polical beliefs and scream "nuke the bastards!", thus finding means to actually do just that. AKA the Evil Genious Also, on job applications, they often say the exact work is "classified" (though they leave clues).

[dmills]

Tokaimura was just facepalm worthy.
Yep, buckets (literally) of ~14% enriched Uranyl Nitrate, and over filling the settling tank to the point that it went prompt critical...

Not that some of Japans other Nuclear misadventures have been much better, but that one just takes the cake for 'was nobody involved in actually doing this thing thinking?'.

Still, some of the hairy arsed shit that goes in in petrochem, makes the nuclear game seem like amateur hour.
Alarms turned off, "Oh we always over fill the column to avoid problems if it runs dry", sensors that report zero if driven past full scale, and emergency vent stacks with **isolating** valves, that the management bonus was based on production not safety was in my view the root cause.

Fucking depressing.

Regards, Dan.

[N2IXK]

I've binged a few of those videos... they're not quite a mystery as they unravel smoothly throughout the video, but you get that creeping sense of dread.

How about the rural gas station one?  You'll be screaming at your monitor, "run away!"

I liked this one. It's even related to electronics, as they were manufacturing quartz crystals for oscillators and other applications:



As usual, plenty of warning signs before the accident, but money won out over public safety yet again.....

[coppercone2]

The employees also sometimes know how dangerous it is but you get a 'stiff' management style which basically implies your gonna get fired if you say anything. Most of the people involved in this kind of stuff usually like, won't even bring anything up if it costs above a certain dollar value.

possible indicators for this management style:
-stained/crappy/ugly floors
-poor paint jobs/rust/old cardboard
-the ceiling / duct work is dirty, stained walls, old grease

If you like the nuclear industry there are also videos that show the careful dismantling of such old structures on youtube.. you could tell the stuff was built cheap.. I mean they got robotically controlled saws on rail systems driving around to cut up the floor..

I am sure someone can make a comprehensive profile list to get an idea about a company like a criminal psychologist would, but its probobly not always that obvious

Here is a trick: run your hand on a exposed girder to see if they even bothered to debur it (usually razor sharp but covered with 10 layers of paint). This could tell you something about the construction of a building and the quality of work involved. Unfortunatly not so easy to know if the bolts happen to be constructed out of cast iron

maybe at least you can tell if the girder is over stressed if the hardened sharp blade on it begins to crack? design feature? 

[T3sl4co1l]

I liked this one. It's even related to electronics, as they were manufacturing quartz crystals for oscillators and other applications:

And not even far from my home town -- I've probably driven past the place on multiple occasions and never realized that's what they did there, or that that could/did happen!

Tim

[coppercone2]

the stuff about japan is very interesting, I thought it would be all angelical in japan 

[Kevman]

Such nuclear waste disposal wasn't isolated to there.

My parents live fairly closely to Apollo PA, former home of NUMEC, and my dad works with a lot of people who live there. My dad works with a woman who lives literally across the street from the former plant.

NUMEC disposed of their waste by digging 10 trenches with a bulldozer on site, pushing the... Whatever... in and covering it up. 

After years of locals campaigning due to very high cancer rates, it finally got Superfund status and the Army Corps of Engineers hired a contractor, around 2012. In 2014, the contractor just up and left. The next day, the army started patrolling the area with assault rifles. The woman could literally see people with rifles watching her kid play in her yard. No one knows what they found, of course, they're not saying.

Considering the company lost 600 pounds of highly enriched uranium in the 60s, well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair

The wikipedia page hasn't been updated since before the original contractor pulled out- It originally was supposed to be done in 2015 and is now scheduled for 2019 until 2031 and cost over half a billion total. They've kept the area under guard this whole time.

All to cleanup a field in on the edge of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Of course my dad's coworker's house is completely worthless, despite being pretty nice. No one wants to live across the street from a radioactive military zone. The government should just buy it from her.

[Nominal Animal]

Still beats the Soviets -- they dumped waste directly into a lake, not even a clay-lined dump or anything, just a natural one.  Among other horrors...

Nice distraction, exactly what I'd expect from an american.

Everybody knows the Soviets were gripped by an insane ideology, so there's nothing surprising in them doing incredibly idiotic things.

[coppercone2]

what

[alsetalokin4017]

For some reason all the embedded videos up above aren't showing up for me, I just get the funny "server error" message. Can the links be posted simply, without embedding?