Allah,

I read the basic letter from the Pantex employees. It is reasonably well written and non inflammatory (if putting your boss on report in public can be deemed non inflammatory). Some of their facts, I can corroborate. The infrastructure at Pantex is very old. It does need to be upgraded. There is not enough money in DOEs budget to do so quickly or with all the required bells and whistles. I do not know anything about how long or hard the employees are working, but I find 72 hrs a week for a large number of employees to be just a little unbelievable. There may be a few who are working that long and agreeing to do so to make more money (overtime). However, that doesn’t mean this (excessive work hours) couldn’t occur or should be accepted.

My experience in the Navy with nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors leads me to believe that if Pantex and BWXT are truly undermanned, then the situation the employees complain of is certainly possible. What I do find hard to believe is that DOE and DOE HQ would turn a blind eye to that particular issue. I am positive that DOE cares and inspects for these things. The employees insinuate that DOE is either ignoring the problems or is in cahoots with BWXT to cut costs and allow this situation to occur. After all how else to get promoted in our federal govt unless you can continually prove that you can do more with less money than your predecessor?

That is the culture which must be fought. In nuclear weapons and reactors, cutting costs in the name of eliminating govt waste ALWAYS leads to reduction in safety standards if allowed to be pursued (and in my opinion, it is pursued too vigorously by Republican administrations in the name of cost cutting, and Dhimmicratic administrations because they see it as a way to kill nuclear power and weapons in the name of “the environment”).

These specific kinds of cuts in costs and doing more with less always lead to problems eventually. Challenger blew up because NASA’s Quality Assurance personnel were overworked and underwhelming in their influence on safety. USS Thresher went to the bottom because we didn’t have sufficient safety designed into submarine systems initially and we hadn’t thought through the engineering possibilites well enough to prevent her loss with all hands onboard (and many, many shipyard workers as well). A crash Quality Assurance program was designed and remains one of the premier QA programs in the world to date. (NASA’s was based on it) Columbia blew up because we let our guard down on the dangerous practices which could be affected by something besides human error during space flight. Bridges and walkways have collapsed because we hadn’t thought the problems through completely or guarded against the likely eventualities adequately. Imagine how safe sticking a large Roman Candle between your legs and riding it to the moon is! And we’ve done it 6 times already as well as hundreds of times just around the Earth, and everytime it is still just as dangerous as the first.

That said, I don’t think using duct tape to keep High Explosive from crumbling off the warhead is necessarily the wrong answer. Duct tape is good for lots of unconventional uses, in a pinch (and opening up a warhead and finding HE about to drop on the floor and possibly blow your hand off would qualify as an unconventional and emergency operation to me). If it fell off and exploded inside the warhead during disassembly, you’d still be reading how a nuclear device exploded at Pantex and only killed three employees instead of 180,000 civilians. Based on the information we have been given, there is not enough to damn Pantex, BWXT, DOE or the employees either.

I think this is a good story that should get some attention from the correct levels. The next time a liberal or a reporter tells you what warmongers Republicans are, remind them that this story says Pantex is overworked at eliminating nuclear weapons because George W Bush got rid of so many nuclear weapons that it took from 2001 to 2010 to dismantle them safely. That is about 3-5 weapons per day working nonstop. That shouldn’t be a problem if you have enough folks to handle the job.

The real question here is whether BWXT has sufficient trained and qualified folks to allow a reasonable work schedule, or whether they experience the same kinds of trained personnel shortages many of us experience every day in corporate America because our bosses won’t hire more folks to help us meet the bottom line effectively instead of just-in-time with just-enough-stuff.

Good story. Don’t panic. I don’t believe the hype that a “near miss” occurred. That’s a load of hooey. Fix the culture, because that will save you in the end, but it will take an awful lot of time to do it right.

Just like winning in Iraq, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Press on.

Subsunk

Subsunk on December 16, 2006 at 11:01 PM