A 2014 aerial view of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Plutonium Facility 4 where production setbacks occurred after a safety near miss. The unique research and production facility is located at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, the birthplace of the U.S. atomic arsenal. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter tours the Los Alamos National Laboratory Plutonium Facility 4 in 2016. It said Los Alamos needs 27 fully qualified safety engineers specialized in keeping the plutonium from fissioning out of control. “The weird thing about criticality safety is it’s not intuitive,” Don Nichols, a former chief for defense nuclear safety at NNSA, said in an interview.

Source: Washington Post June 18, 2017 21:04 UTC