http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak

Mayak Production Association (Russian: Маяк производственное объединение, from Маяк "lighthouse") refers to an industrial complex that is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation. It housed plutonium production reactors and a reprocessing plant. Located 150 km south-east of Ekaterinburg between the towns of Kasli and 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk, the closest city to the nuclear complex is Ozyorsk, the central administrative territorial district. As part of the Russian nuclear weapon program, Mayak was formerly known as Chelyabinsk-40 and later as Chelyabinsk-65 after the postal codes of the site.[1]

Mayak was the site of the second-worst nuclear accident in history (after the Chernobyl disaster) when an explosion in 1957 released 50-100 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste, contaminating a huge territory in the eastern Urals. The Soviet regime kept this accident secret for about 30 years. Working conditions at Mayak, and a lack of environmental responsibility in the past, led to additional contamination of the surrounding lake district and severe health hazards and accidents. Some areas are still under restricted access because of radiation. In the past 45 years, about 400,000 people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents.[2]

Mayak was a target of Gary Powers' surveillance flight in May 1960. [3]
Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF). Looking at administration building of the storage facility to include all the support facilities. Excavator is one of the pieces of construction equipment procured by the USACE.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Nuclear history
* 2 Kyshtym Disaster
* 3 Other accidents
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

[edit] Nuclear history

The Mayak plant was built in 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy, as part of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapon program. The plant's original mission was to make, refine, and machine plutonium for weapons. Five nuclear reactors were built for this purpose. Later the plant came to specialize in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors, and plutonium from decommissioned weapons. Today the plant makes tritium and radioisotopes, but no plutonium. In recent years, proposals that the plant reprocess, for money, waste from foreign nuclear reactors have given rise to controversy.

In the early years of its operation, the Mayak plant released quantities of radioactively contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant, and into the Techa river, whose waters ultimately flow into the Ob River. The downstream consequences of this radiation pollution have yet to be determined. Some residents of Ozersk claim that living there poses no present-day risk, because of the decrease in the ambient radiation level over the past 50 years. They also report no problems with their health and the health of Mayak plant workers. These claims lack hard verification, and no one denies that many who worked at the plant in 1950s and '60s subsequently died of the effects of radiation. While the situation has since improved, the administration of the Mayak plant has been repeatedly criticized in recent years for environmentally unsound practices.
[edit] Kyshtym Disaster
Main article: Kyshtym disaster
Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF). Looking at the south side of the main Administration Building and security building of the storage facility.

Working conditions at Mayak resulted in severe health hazards and many accidents.[4] The most notable accident occurred on 29 September 1957, when the failure of the cooling system for a tank storing tens of thousands of tons of dissolved nuclear waste resulted in a chemical (non-nuclear) explosion having a force estimated at about 75 tons of TNT (310 gigajoules). This released 740 PBq (20 MCi) of fission products, of which 74 PBq(2 MCi) drifted off the site, creating a contaminated region of 15,000-20,000 km2 called the East Urals Radioactive trace.[1][2] Subsequently, at least 200 people died of radiation sickness, 10,000 people were evacuated from their homes, and 470,000 people were exposed to radiation. People "grew hysterical with fear with the incidence of unknown 'mysterious' diseases breaking out. Victims were seen with skin 'sloughing off' their faces, hands and other exposed parts of their bodies."[5] "Hundreds of square miles were left barren and unusable for decades and maybe centuries. Hundreds of people died, thousands were injured and surrounding areas were evacuated."[6] This nuclear accident, the Soviet Union's worst before the Chernobyl disaster, is categorised as a level 6 "serious accident" on the 0-7 International Nuclear Events Scale.

Rumours of a nuclear mishap somewhere in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk had long been circulating in the West. That there had been a serious nuclear accident west of the Urals was eventually inferred from research on the effects of radioactivity on plants, animals, and ecosystems, published by Professor Leo Tumerman, former head of the Biophysics Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, and associates.

According to Gyorgy,[7] who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to open up the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident all along, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling USA nuclear industry. "Ralph Nader surmised that the information had not been released because of the reluctance of the CIA to highlight a nuclear accident in the USSR, that could cause concern among people living near nuclear facilities in the USA."[5] Only in 1992, shortly after the fall of the USSR, did the Russians officially acknowledge the accident.
[edit] Other accidents
Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF). The building is the ventilation center of the storage facility. The ventilation tunnel showing in the north of the ventilation center.

On 10 December 1968, the facility was experimenting with plutonium purification techniques. Two operators were using an "unfavorable geometry vessel in an improvised and unapproved operation as a temporary vessel for storing plutonium organic solution."[8] In other words, the operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of vessel. After most of the solution had been poured out, there was a flash of light, and heat. After the complex had been evacuated, the shift supervisor and radiation control supervisor re-entered the building. The shift supervisor then entered the room of the incident, caused another, larger nuclear reaction and irradiated himself with a deadly dose of radiation. The shift supervisor's actions are the subject of a Darwin Award nomination.[9]

The Mayak plant is associated with two other major nuclear accidents. The first occurred as a result of heavy rains causing Lake Karachay polluted with radioactive waste to release radioactive material into surrounding waters, and the second occurred in 1967 when wind spread dust from the bottom of Lake Karachay, a dried-up radioactively polluted lake (used as a dumping basin for Mayak's radioactive waste since 1951), over parts of Ozersk; over 400,000 people were irradiated.[2]

* In 1994, a fire resulted in a radioactive gas leak of 4% of the plant's allowed annual release.[10]
* In 2003, the plant's operating licence was revoked temporarily, due to liquid radioactive waste handling procedures resulting in waste being disposed into open water.[11]
* In June 2007, an accident involving a radioactive pulp occurred over a two-day period.[12]
* In October 2007, a valve failure during transport of a radioactive liquid resulted in spilling of a radioactive material.[13]
* In 2008, a repair worker was injured during a "pneumatic" incident, involving a quantity of alpha emitter release. The worker's hand was injured and the wound contaminated, with the worker's finger amputated to avoid further injury.[14]

Interesting. I had heard of the incident (vuagely remember) but was too young to internalize/care. I did not know that was Gary Powers' mission as I thought blackbird missions were routine (they were).
Thanks.

The Russian equivilent of Pantex Tx, USA?

quote Originally posted by maryjane: The Russian equivilent of Pantex Tx, USA?

Pretty much, but with the Russian glow in the dark tendency.

Read enough on Pantex, and you will likely come to the conclusion it also has a pretty good contamination/cleanup problem if it is ever abandoned/shut down & it's not a small facility.

Anonymous Letter Prompts New Investigation of Nuclear Plant
11 April 2011
By Roland Oliphant

Deputy Chief Prosecutor Yury Zolotov on Friday ordered a re-examination of a case of criminal negligence at the Mayak nuclear processing facility after local media received an anonymous letter warning of a "nuclear Armageddon" at the facility.

But Rosatom and the plant's management say they are the victims of a smear campaign connected to a business dispute and have threatened legal action.

The scandal broke when regional news organizations received a letter addressed to "the global public, [President] Dmitry Medvedev, [Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin, the Rosatom management and the media" last Wednesday.

The letter claimed that counterfeit Chinese piping in the plant's cooling and "special sewage" system would "not last another two years" and was "on the verge of destruction."

The authors, who claimed to be "workers from Mayak," said they were writing anonymously for their own safety.

"The natural disasters and technological accidents of the past are nothing compared with the nuclear Armageddon that awaits us!" the authors declared.

The allegations are not new — the letter referred to claims originally made by a Chelyabinsk blogger in 2009.

The Prosecutor General's Office for the Urals Federal District said in a statement on its web site Friday that Zolotov had ordered prosecutors to "re-examine the decision" to close the original criminal investigation into the use of counterfeit equipment in repair work at Mayak.

Mayak, near the town of Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region, is Russia's primary nuclear reprocessing facility, producing fuel for nuclear reactors in Russia and abroad and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from civilian and military reactors.

It has a patchy record — it was the site of the 1957 Kyshtym nuclear accident, the Soviet Union's worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl. In 2003 it briefly lost its operating license over fears it was leaking waste into local rivers.

But Mayak's management insists that it has cleaned up its act, protesting that the letter's "brazen and baseless charges" undermine "its well-deserved reputation as one of the largest and most reliable [facilities] in the nuclear and defense industries of Russia."

State nuclear monopoly Rosatom maintains that the Chinese pipes were chosen because they came up cheaper in a tender, and that repeated tests have proven them to "meet or exceed" the standards of similar grades of Russian piping.

They also point out that the "special sewage system" is not connected to the reactors' cooling system.

The plant's management said in a statement that it is considering legal action "to defend its reputation," but did not say whom it would sue.

Rosatom, however, suggested it was dealing with a business dispute.

"We believe that the anonymous letter is an indecent tool being used by one of our contractors with whom the company is engaged in a court dispute," the company said in its statement.

A company spokesman refused to name the specific contractor Rosatom suspects of sending the letter.

Alexander Podoprigora, a Chelyabinsk-based political scientist, wrote on his LiveJournal blog that the culprit was local businessman Vladimir Kosazhevsky, whose companies have been locked in a legal dispute with Mayak since 2009.

The Arbitration Court's online database shows that Mayak is suing YuUMZ for nearly four million rubles ($142,000) for breach of a construction contract.

There are six other active claims by Rosatom affiliates against Kosazhevsky's Southern Urals Machine Building Factory (known by its Russian acronym YuUMZ) in the Chelyabinsk Arbitration Court.

Mayak is also locked in a dispute with the Russian Postal Service over rights to a nonresidential property in Ozersk.

Podoprigora suggested that Kosazhevsky was looking to become manager of the plant himself. Kosazhevsky denied the allegations in local media.

It is impossible to verify the source of the letter. Editors at the Novy-Region news agency said they received the letter Wednesday and published a report based on it the same day.

Editors at the news agency said they had no idea who the sender was and that messages to the sender's e-mail address had not been answered. E-mails from The Moscow Times to the originating address also went unanswered by Sunday evening.

It is not the first time Rosatom has been targeted by anonymous whistleblowers. In December 2009 the web site ProAtom.ru published an anonymous letter detailing alleged corruption in the construction of the new Novovoronezh nuclear plant.

And a former Rosatom employee who approached The Moscow Times claimed that such corner-cutting was endemic throughout the nuclear complex and that a serious nuclear disaster as a result was a real possibility.

The source said a faulty water pump at the Kalinin nuclear plant in the Tver region was not replaced.

He said he witnessed the failure of a pump at the station's new Reactor Unit 3, which occurred because of a lack of lubricating oil while the unit was under construction in 2004 and 2005.

Instead of replacing it, the management did the paperwork to suggest a new pump had been acquired and installed. In reality, he said, the damaged pump was simply removed, driven around the site and reinstalled.

Water pump failure was a key cause of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The source, who says he worked on the construction of the Kalinin and other power plants between 2003 and 2007, would only speak anonymously and was unable to provide documentary proof of his story.

Rosatom said it could not comment on the individual case, but said it has a hotline on which anyone can report allegations of corruption within the company. A spokesman offered to pass the allegations on to the department that verifies such claims.

"Rosatom is very often accused of corruption by those who for one reason or another have failed to make it through the procedure for a tender or have lost because of inflated prices," a spokesman said.

But while Rosatom blames unscrupulous business partners, environmentalists say a lack of oversight makes it impossible to tell whether the firm is telling the truth.

Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the EcoDefense environmental group, said the story from Mayak tallied with rumors that have been coming out of the industry for years.

"The biggest problem seems to be with new construction," he said. "That's where the greatest opportunities for pocketing money are."

"It's almost impossible for us to verify what is going on; perhaps it is simply a business dispute. But without an independent watchdog it is impossible to tell."

The nuclear industry is technically overseen by a department of Rostekhnadzor, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection. But environmentalists say it has lost its teeth since being subsumed into the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry in 2008.

"Formally, they are responsible for ensuring safety. In practice, Rosatom is essentially self-regulating," Slivyak said. "And that's the main problem."

A report produced by Transparency International and EcoDefense in November found multiple violations of procurement standards in 40 percent of 200 procurement deals studied, and found the company's practices were effectively unregulated.

Rosatom at the time rejected the findings.

Bulat Nigmatulin, a former deputy atomic energy minister who has long positioned himself as a critic of the current Rosatom management, said only an independent inquiry could settle the matter.

"It could be nothing; but the problem is, at the moment, we only have Rosatom's word for it," he said. "There should be a public commission, including members of Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection and the FSB, to investigate the claims. And if they find any evidence of wrongdoing, there should be criminal prosecution," he said by telephone.

"If the commission found nothing, then I would believe them. But the main thing is that everything should be public," he said.
http://www.themoscowtimes.c.../article/434781.html

There are older pics on the net that show what it once looked like. I've been by it several times during my life--security is "tight" to say the least.

Pantex Incidents ...
Site Contamination and Health Problems
Pantex has a history of contamination on and outside of the property. Until recently, the found contaminants were primarily chemical, not radioactive, since Pantex did nuclear assembly later on. With increased emphasis placed on handling plutonium and tritium, the possibility of radioactive contamination rose. When manufacturing conventional weapons, workers had used water lathes to shape blocks of explosive. The chemical wastewater drained into ditches or shallow lakes creating sludge with high concentrations of explosives. During the five decades since the plant was built, the EPA has documented gasoline spills, burning of explosives, and disposal of heavy metals in treated wastewater such as lead, arsenic, mercury and barium. This wastewater was used by farmers for irrigation. Uranium and tritium have also been found in low levels within a half mile of the plant. (a plutonium pit's design includes a small tube to insert the tritium/deuterium inside- seals break at this point and create a pathway out). Waste oils and solvents contaminated with high explosives were disposed of and allowed to percolate and evaporate in an unlined waste pit for 26 years. The total liquid waste disposed of in this pit was never recorded, and ranges between from 90,000 to 350,000 gallons of chemicals. For example, 3,000 gallons of the carcinogen toluene were disposed of in this manner in 1978. Boyd Deaver of the TNRCC stated, "It was a common practice for a long time to just burn things in the burn pits. They didn't know what they burned... what they released into the air. The bottom line was getting the bomb out, not the environment."

In May of 1994, the Pantex site was designated as a Superfund site. The governors office had opposed the move stating that another federal environmental law (RCRA) requiring sufficient cleanup standards was already enforced by DOE, EPA, and the State of Texas; that not only would superfund increase procedural requirements and drive up the cost to taxpayers, but the move "would threaten the state's ability to oversee and participate in the remediation." Tom Walton, Energy Department spokesman, spoke on behalf of the plant, saying "this could put a stigma on us... an undeserved stigma." Federal officials explained that since depleted uranium had been found near the site in trace amounts, RCRA, which does not regulate radioactive materials, would be insufficient, and that invoking CERCLA, the Superfund law, would be required to handle the situation. Beverly Gattis of STAND agreed. "The point is it is not a judgement call; it's based on evidence, and if evidence supports the (hazard ranking) scores, then sure I think it's fair and right that people should know that this is an important cleanup that needs to be done," she said. Don Hancock of the Southwest Research Institute added that "at a superfund site, there is regulatory authority over radionuclides, and there are cleanup standards that have to be met in terms of remediation or cleanup-type activities."

Also in 1994, unpublished Health Department statistics revealed that the rate of leukemia deaths in Carson County was more than twice the statewide average for the decade of 1981-1991. Death rates from brain cancer were slightly elevated in neighboring Potter and Randall Counties, and thyroid cancer death rates among Potter County women were higher than the rest of the state. Previously, the Health Department had conducted a small survey and concluded in 1992 that there was an overall lower rate of cancer in the area. However, after independent research done by Susan Lee using figures from the Texas Cancer Registry demonstrated the limited scope of the survey, the Health Department was forced to revisit the study and ended up confirming Susan Lee's findings. Dr. Steven Galson, chief medical officer in the DOE's Office of Environment, Safety, and Health, stated the numbers were "clearly alarming... They are high enough to raise anyone's eyebrows. Elevated cancer rates of that order of magnitude warrant further investigation as to the cause"

When the study was released, Jim and Jeri Osborne, who had been keeping track of their neighbor's cancer deaths, stated that 5 of the 7 farmers who irrigated their crops with treated sewage water from the plant had died of cancer, mostly with lymphomas. A sixth farmer had been battling cancer for the past five years. They also noted that five farmers who cultivated or harvested crops on the grounds of the plant had also died with cancers. "I am not trying to scare anyone", said Osborne, 56, who then chaired the county's republican party, "All I want to do is make them aware of what is going on." The Osborne's have kept a map of Carson County marked with colored pins, each representing the death of a cancer victim. At the time of this interview, the count was 235. They decided to start the project when two of their neighbors had died of cancer within the same week. Later, they noticed a pattern, with pins tending toward the north by northeast of the Pantex property.

Dorothy Bell, who resides in Armstrong County maintains a similar map for her own county, and shows 71 cancer victims. Her husband worked at Pantex from 1959 to 1989. He said he did not question plant operations until 1987, when he was directed to drill a uranium slug out of a vessel and was exposed to radioactive dust and fumes. Toxicologists were still treating him for a series of ailments which led to his retirement. Bell won a workers compensation award, which the plant had appealled. The couple has also filed a negligence suit against Pantex.

Later, in November of 1994, UT Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology announced that it had found traces of high explosive and nitrate contamination in the Ogallala aquifer 2 to 3 miles from the Amarillo water field, Amarillo's water supply. This included traces of TNT (trinitrotoluene), RDX (research developed explosives) and HMX (high-melting explosives). RDX is used as a rat poison and can damage the central nervous system. TNRCC officials stated that there was no readily available data of the health effects of these explosives in groundwater. State officials had speculated that an existing layer of clay would prevent seepage into the Ogallala. Mavis Belisle, director of the organization Peace Farm which monitors activity at Pantex, stated "Theres a forty to fifty year backlog of stuff that is not in the aquifer but is somewhere in between. We now know that it takes 50 years to get through that hard clay."

A year later in 1995, officials reported that several neighboring farms tested showed much higher concentrations of explosives in the water, as much as 57 parts per billion, about 10 times what is considered safe by drinking water standards. A well on the site perimeter showed levels of high explosives at 5000 parts per billion, or 1000 times higher than safe drinking water standards allow.
Plant Safety and Incidents
Just prior to the superfund designation, Pantex was forced to shutdown for several months to address safety concerns due to several incidents which had occured over the past few months. On February 2, warning lights on a radiation warning system failed due to previous software modifications to the fail-safe system. It was discovered that no records of the revisions to the software were ever required or maintained, so the direct cause of the malfunction was unclear. On February 24, an inspector found that a valve on an automatic water-deluge system, functional only when open, was left closed by a preventative maintenance team working on the fire-protection system. On March 19, a tritium gas alarm went off due to a malfunction. No radioactivity was found, but investigators recommended a full cause analysis because of "repetitive" alarm system deficiencies. On March 29, weapons technicians were locked in a disassembly bay when the automatic door system malfunctioned. One technician managed to escape through a cargo door. On April 4, failures in the air filtration system were discovered by a weekend maintenance crew. The crew failed to notify the technicians and work started normally the following Monday. It was later that afternoon that the failure was reported to plant personnel. During the subsequent investigation, it became clear that three months of preventative maintenance records had been wiped out in a "computer glitch". The problem with the air filtration systems was similar to an occurence in February, when an investigator for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) observed workers taking apart an 8-inch artillery-fired nuclear warhead in a building with an inoperatable filtration system. John Conway, chairman of the DNFSB, stated that "particularly disturbing is the observation that operating personnel were not trained or knowledgeable of the safety envelope or the critical systems."

A congressional source involved in oversight at Pantex said that one of the major problems is the preventative maintenance program and a lack of reliable records for safety systems. "if something like this happened at a commercial nuclear facility," he said, "you'd see fines and penalties immediately. It was a serious gap here."

In July 1994, Dallas Morning News reported that the gravel gerties had gaps measuring up to 3/4 of an inch on the steel doors that could lead to radioactive releases, and that they were first identified as a safety concern in a "secret appendix" to a 1983 Environmental Impact Statement. It was found that these gaps occured due to repeated opening and closing of the doors, and that negative pressurization did not help sufficiently since the gaps were too large. As strange as not having already fixed the problem, it was after a 1996 environmental survey team report restated the problem that Pantex finally started filling these leaks, 12 years later. "It's like having a hole, a square-foot in the wall, through which some of the airborne plutonium would blow," said physicist Frank von Hippel, former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Airborne plutonium spreading within a 1.6 kilometer radius would increase the risk of cancer death by 25%, he said. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a written statement from Mason & Hanger claimed the leaks "were not sealed sooner because the plant chose to stress accident prevention instead."

As of 2005, the gravel gerties made news again when it was reported that the sealant around the doors was peeling. AP reported that according to a July 21 report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a 6-year-old work order to repair the faulty door welds was never completed, and that it would cost another $20 million to address the problem. During Pantex's safety review, other structural cracks were also found which would also have to be addressed.

Other questions about the safety of the gravel gerties and bunkers were raised. Pantex and the DOE often referred to the bunkers as high-tech, failsafe chambers which keep airborne radiation from scattering in an accidental explosion. The leaks around the blast doors were not only a concern over releases during plant procedures, but also the containment concern in the event of an explosion. Chances of an explosion of a gravel gertie are claimed by federal officials to be remote, but as Beverly Gattis explains, "you are always caught in the boggle that 'this isn't likely to happen,' still, 12 years is a long time to ignore something that has the potential for harm. It seems astonishing that 12 years and millions of dollars later that this still is not fixed."

The bunkers in Zone 12 proved to be less than suitable for the task. During the construction and upgrading of the buildings, cost cutting had gone so far as remove environmental/humidity control equipment from the plans. This equipment is particularly crucial considering that the pit containers require a strict humidity controlled environment. The DNFSB concluded, "this decision was made at some risk, because strategic pits are unlikely to be repackaged soon in sealed containers."

One of the Zone 12 buildings, 12-116, was to hold 4000 "strategic" pits. These pits were scheduled to remain in long-term storage at Pantex even if DOE had another disposition for surplus plutonium. The other 12,546 surplus plutonium pits were destined for Building 12-66, which was soon later assessed to not be able to stand a crash from a small commercial helicopter. The DOE decided to instead to increase the number of Zone 4 magazines with active cooling. There was no mention of adding humidity controls for the AL-R8 containers. Pantex is 8.5 miles from the Amarillo National Airport, where in addition, the Department of Defense continues to conduct Air Force training flights over the bunkers.

In 1996, whistleblower complaints had led to an investigation by the Government Accountability Project, who interviewed several dozen Pantex employees about safety concerns and found that "the kinds of things we are hearing is that it's not ok for a worker at Pantex to raise a safety and health or environmental allegation- or talk to anybody- to talk to the DOE or to GAP... is going to be career-threatening, that there will be reprisal against you." A DOE investigation into a previous complaint noted that two workers were reluctant to raise safety issues with supervisors.

Dan Fairfax, a 44-year-old former Pantex employee, had charged in a 1993 complaint that plant officials retaliated against him for reporting alleged nuclear safety violations. Along with other safety concerns, he reported that in March 1993, he was present in an assembly cell where weapons work was being done; that workers were not wearing required protective clothing while removing high explosives from a plutonium pit. He was not properly informed by his escort that a radiation work permit (required posted guidelines for working in a radiologically-controlled area) was posted for the cell, and stood by a plutonium pit for about five minutes before he was told that it was special nuclear material. The DOE Office of Nuclear Safety Enforcement investigated, and reported that the "problems he raise either lacked safety significance or were ongoing issues known to the DOE." The report refuted nearly all of the allegations reported by Fairfax, yet recommended corrective measures for some of the safety issues he had raised. Fairfax said investigators detailed his concerns, but downplayed his allegations. Fairfax was soon afterward given an unsatisfactory job review for reporting safety hazards, was threatened with firing, and offered a transfer to another job at Pantex. "If you read the executive summary, it just whitewashes everything," said Fairfax, "I got screwed and tattooed because I raised nuclear safety issues."
http://www.texasradiation.org/pantex.html

quote Originally posted by dennis_6: Pantex Incidents ...http://www.texasradiation.org/pantex.html

No offense intended dennis_6, but
When someone copies/pastes lengthy articles, I rarely ever bother to read them and comment on them even less often. They almost always, tell only one side of the story. Not saying they are----or are not-- true or accurate, but i prefer to research things myself from a variety of sources. The site you quoted and linked from, hasn't been updated in 5 years.

http://www.texasradiation.org/radtexasfaq.html

quote About this site This site has basically been put on mothballs since 2006 or so- however- it still serves as the only source of an omnibus historical overview of the nuclear history of Texas.

Tristan Mendoza has been a vocal opponent of virtually all uses of nuclear power for many years, and tho I won't dispute his assertions, (for now) neither will I accept that his work or aticles to be unbiased.

He has a definite axe to grind.

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 04-19-2011).]

Very possibly, Its just the only thing i could find on Pantex, after you stated If I researched it, I didn't post the whole article, just wanted to see what you had to say about it. Other than that, I have only heard of very very minor incidents concerning Pantex and thats probably the case, seen an Osprey flying near there once when I drove over the road.
I still believe we should have Nuclear weapons and power, and its really hard to find the truth, because all the sources seem biased on way or the other and either make mountains out of mole hills or mole hills out of mountains.

[This message has been edited by dennis_6 (edited 04-19-2011).]