Half-life

https://features.propublica.org/los-alamos/chad-walde-nuclear-facility-radiation-cancer/

by wallflower • 8 years ago

59 12 8 years ago

features.propublica.org

kelsolaar• 8 years ago

Moving and sad story.

bpchaps2• 8 years ago

Interesting to see this on HN. I applied for a job at propublica where the application asked to replicate the research for a story from their local reporting network. I picked this article, and went as far as I could on the FOIA side of research.

For anyone curious, here are my research notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iu_evesAD8hiSjAsZ5l7h6zr...

tambre• 8 years ago

Access denied

You'll have to adjust the permissions on that document.

bpchaps2• 8 years ago

Thanks - fixed.

code_duck• 8 years ago

Not surprising. I grew up in New Mexico and recently lived for a year in Los Alamos, with a girlfriend working as a researcher. I was looking for a space for a workshop and almost rented out a garage across from a suspicious empty field… It turned out to be the site of an original Manhattan Project landfill. This piqued my interest, and I looked into the environmental history of Los Alamos. As recounted in the article, the history and current situation are terrifying and incredibly irresponsible. I’m not sure how anyone could ever think that dumping water containing plutonium straight into the ground was not going to be a problem. The thing is, this sort of wanton pollution is hardly unique to Los Alamos. The federal government, military and contractors like the University of California did this all over the country, especially in the west, even very near populated areas. Polluting the surrounding areas is a slightly different topic then poisoning workers, but the attitudes and shoddy practices responsible are the same.

the_clarence• 8 years ago

Can we get a better title? I thought this was about the game

reshie• 8 years ago

its fitting i think. its all about perspective and context albiet the title does not give context but depending on your perspective and/or background it fits.

starbeast• 8 years ago

If you do not actually include an enforcement process in your bureaucratic monitoring system, then most of your data detailing what goes on in some of the most heavily regulated and dangerous professional environments in existence, will be utter fictions written up at the end of the month when the paperwork is due and is in a state far worse than useless. This often kills people and it sometimes kills industries - https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsbnfl-staff-falsify-mox-...

RMarcus• 8 years ago

I worked at Los Alamos for several years, and wore a TLD (dosimeter, radiation detection device). The only two times mine was ever "triggered" was when I left it on at the dentist (x-ray) and at the airport (x-ray).

It's interesting to see that these explanations are suggested even when employees say it isn't the case -- when I was "brought in" for my "why did you get this many mrems" talk, I explained about the dentist and the airport, and still got sent home (for a week!) with three doctor's visits and additional screenings. Many anecdotes != data, but when I asked a lot of my friends who worked there, or still work there, they were equally surprised.

None of us knew Chad Walde. It's well-known that different groups at the lab take safety more or less seriously. Which is obviously a huge problem when your dealing with source material.

I do wish the article had a little less of a "nuclear taboo" doom & gloom to it... there's less background radiation in Los Alamos than there is in Los Angeles. And substantially less than areas surrounding coal plants. In my experience, the "fear of the glow" causes people to view nuclear power with extreme suspicion... even when coal & oil plants actively pump far more deadly stuff into the air, far closer to major population centers.

The lab needs to get their shit together, and I believe they've done a lot over the past 10 years... hopefully it keeps moving in the right direction...

smueller1234• 8 years ago

"Chad went through increasing levels of radiation training, including an eight-hour course that teaches lab employees what ionizing radiation is, how it penetrates bodies and how they can protect themselves. It is required for workers whose jobs routinely place them in areas with high radiation, contamination or airborne radioactivity."

I used to work at a nuclear research facility in Germany. One of the side jobs available as a PhD student was to teach this type of training, designed to teach the layman about ionizing radiation and some basic safety rules. (For example the difference between external radiation doses and the potentially much more dangerous role that ingested radionuclides may play.)

These trainings were, if I recall correctly, two days long. I remember being told that they were required for anyone who might enter any commercial nuclear power plant in a professional capacity, including any local contractors, firemen, you name it.

My point is: the article positions this as some advanced course, when it really is the absolute basis, taught to everyone, geared to all out pragmatism. Knowing that, it makes me doubt some of the other suggestions and conclusions in the article, even though it's not hard to imagine that these sites at least had a history of playing fast and loose in the early days.

By the way, the most important lesson from that training was: you can't see radiation, so instead of second guessing, calmly get as far away as possible (radiation on surface of a sphere goes with 1/r^2) and alert someone with more detailed understanding. "Shielding" likely doesn't quite do what you think, so prefer distance.

findyoucef• 8 years ago

My friend's dad died of brain cancer in 2012. He worked here for years.

equalunique• 8 years ago

Incredibly sad. I am hopeful that the trend towards technological interconnectedness (survellience & IoT, as examples) means that critical gaps in records will become a thing of the past.

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