Bomb Part Storage at Ky. Plant Disclosed
Nuclear Agency Is Told of Hazards In Secret Program

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 11, 2000;

More than 1,600 tons of nuclear weapons parts reportedly lie scattered around the Energy Department's Paducah, Ky., uranium plant, a safety manager informed regulators yesterday in a new disclosure of potential hazards unknown to workers or civilian plant supervisors.

Some of the bomb parts are stored in above-ground shelters and could pose a risk of exposure or even an accidental nuclear reaction at the plant, if the components are contaminated with radioactive substances such as enriched uranium and plutonium, the official reported in a signed statement to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The U.S. Enrichment Corp. (USEC), the government-chartered private company that now runs the plant, acknowledged yesterday that its senior officials recently discussed the issue with the Department of Energy.

"USEC has been assured that DOE is not aware of any conditions that create a radiological hazard to USEC personnel at the site beyond those already known and controlled," company spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said.

Energy Department officials involved with the country's classified nuclear weapons program apparently were aware of the shipment of bomb components to Paducah over many years, but the department did not until recently inform the plant's civilian overseers and safety officials who were in charge of evaluating threats to workers.

The statement by Raymond G. Carroll, a senior manager of health and safety programs at the plant since 1992, quotes a conversation with another senior civilian plant official who reportedly told Carroll he was worried about the bomb parts after hearing of their existence from a DOE official.

Carroll also said he was told that DOE officials recently began hauling away documents related to weapons dismantlement.

A DOE spokesman confirmed that the department is investigating "classified national security programs" conducted at Paducah in the past, along with the Justice and Defense departments.

"This review includes the examination of potential worker exposures and any safety, health and environmental issues associated with these national security programs," the official said.

Carroll's statement was obtained by The Washington Post yesterday as the government was making its most detailed acknowledgment to date of historically unsafe practices at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a hulking industrial complex that has produced enriched uranium for nuclear bombs and power plants since 1952.

The 77-page DOE report faults a "climate of secrecy" for keeping workers and neighbors uninformed and unprotected while radioactive contaminants spread through factory buildings and surrounding areas. A few volunteers were deliberately exposed to uranium in a series of previously undisclosed human experiments, the report said.

The DOE report does not mention nuclear bomb parts. A worker lawsuit against plant contractors last summer revealed that some weapons parts had been melted down at the plant to recover gold and other metals. But details of the scope and purpose of the bomb program have remained shrouded in secrecy.

Both DOE and Justice are investigating whistleblower allegations of improper handling of radioactive waste at the plant.

Yesterday's disclosure by Carroll suggests the bomb program may have introduced yet another unknown hazard at a facility where workers had been lulled by assurances that their jobs were virtually risk-free.

"Personnel could conceivably encounter highly enriched uranium or plutonium (or even tritium) without even knowing it," said Carroll, a 30-year veteran of the nuclear safety field who now works for USEC. Tritium is a radioactive component of the hydrogen bomb.

Carroll, in a five-page memo filed with NRC and DOE officials, said he learned about the bomb parts from a senior USEC supervisor, radiation protection manager Orville Cypret. Carroll wrote that Cypret said he learned about the bomb parts from Dale Jackson, the former DOE manager of the Paducah site.

Carroll said Cypret told him that 1,600 tons of weapons components had been shipped to Paducah since the 1950s. Although some parts were buried, others were dispersed in various storage areas across the sprawling complex, according to Carroll's statement.

Cypret became alarmed after a Justice Department investigator told him "he would not ask about a 'classified tritium project' or past nuclear weapons handling at Paducah," Carroll wrote in his statment.

In keeping with security policy, the weapons parts were not labeled, though "DOE thinks it knows where most of the material is," Carroll wrote.

Cypret and Jackson did not return phone calls from The Post. A Justice Department official in Louisville said he could not comment on the department's investigation into whistleblower complaints at the plant.

Carroll said he was told that "large quantities" of plutonium and highly enriched uranium had been brought into the plant, and "not just in reactor tails." Last summer, following allegations by current and former workers, DOE acknowledged for the first time that radioactive plutonium and neptunium had entered the plant in uranium "tails," recycled uranium metal from military reactors that produced plutonium.

Carroll said in his statement that Cypret said a team of DOE officials had been assembled to investigate the matter but their findings "would not be voluntarily shared" with the plant's civilian managers. Instead, as records relating to the bomb program were found, they were held in a special vault for classified material.

"Someone from [the DOE's Oak Ridge, Tenn., site] would drive down each night to pick them up," Carroll wrote, quoting Cypret.

Carroll said the new disclosures had left him deeply concerned about the safety of the plant's workers. Besides the risk of radioactive contamination, improperly stored nuclear material could trigger a lethal "criticality," an accidental nuclear reaction.

"A decision had apparently been made that national security would take precedence over personnel radiological safety," Carroll wrote. "I find this situation to be unconscionable."

The risk posed by weapons parts could range from high to minimal, depending on the materials and how they are stored.

DOE's report on historical practices at Paducah wraps up the second of two major probes ordered by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in August. DOE officials described it as one of the most thorough in the department's history.

The report concludes that the plant's lapses in worker safety in many ways reflected the culture of the time. "The Cold War was a reality," and federal oversight of the plant "was primarily directed at cost, schedule and production," the report said.

Although the "intention to protect workers was apparent," plant managers frequently failed to meet even the relatively lenient safety and environmental standards of the day, the report states.

The risks posed by plutonium and neptunium were "neither fully understood or appreciated," the report states. "The presence of these materials, the increased risks involved and the rationale for additional controls was not shared with workers."

In addition, radioactive and chemical wastes were routinely discharged into the water and air. Investigators documented nighttime smokestack emissions--dubbed "midnight negatives"--involving tens of thousands of pounds of uranium dust and smoke.

Richardson said the findings underscore his efforts to win compensation and other aid for ailing workers.

"I'm going to continue to be up front with the Paducah workers and the community about environmental, safety and health conditions at our sites during the Cold War," he said.