The contamination of 16 workers at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials Fuels Complex in November shook the nuclear establishment in eastern Idaho to its core.

It appears today that none of the workers are suffering immediate effects from the uncontrolled release of oxidized plutonium from a package of weapons-grade plutonium at the retired zero-power physics reactor.

But the breakdown in basic safety measures the accident revealed hit the site like nothing seen since the early 1990s.

Now the Department of Energy has released its accident investigation report and the soul-searching continues. The same questions are raised after two miners died in the Silver Valley last year.

The Idaho Falls Post Register did an in-depth story on the report that showed the accident was preventable and that INL managers had numerous opportunities to avoid the conditions that led to the contamination. Management at the ZPPR had changed hands since the fuel was removed from the reactor and stored.

The board was critical of the contractor, Battelle Energy Alliance, for weakness in the work planning and control process. Battelle didn’t recognize the hazards associated with the plutonium material, the report said: “None of the work planning addressed the radiological and engineered controls necessary for mitigating a potential release of airborne plutonium.”

The findings prompted the Post Register to come down hard in an editorial.

“The support of this community is the foundation for everything that has been built at the lab. If because of fears for worker safety, that support erodes, the whole thing might just crumble to the ground,” the editorial said.

That prompted INL lab director John Grossenbacher, who heads Battelle in Idaho, to come to the defense of the managers under him, even as he agreed with the findings of the report.

“If you are going to point to anybody, it ought to be me, because I’m the guy that’s responsible for making sure those systems and standards are appropriate,” Grossenbacher told the Post Register’s Sven Berg.

The Post Register got some support in its prognosis from nuclear industry columnist and blogger Dan Yurman, who said in a blog they “nailed it.”

When our own Kevin Richert reported in the early 1990s about all kinds of violations of safety standards at the INL’s Naval Reactors Facilities, based on leaked documents, many readers in that nuclear-dominated community were critical. They said we journalists were making a big thing out of nothing.

But Richert, then a reporter for the Post Register, was leaked the documents because safety officials trained under legendary nuclear pioneer Admiral Hyman Rickover considered the violations the harbinger of worse accidents to come if changes weren’t made. What the industry didn’t like was seeing its dirty laundry aired in public.

But Grossenbacher’s response in taking personal responsibility is a welcome sign.

Safety issues also came to a head in North Idaho’s Lucky Friday Mine. Two miners died last year in apparently unrelated incidents. Then federal officials closed the mine for an unrelated problem identified in the mine’s shaft.

Contrast Grossenbacher’s reaction to that of Hecla and the mining community up north.

“While we are disappointed with this order and are considering what action we might take, work has already begun to resume production as quickly as possible,” said Phil Baker, Hecla’s president and CEO.

Gov. Butch Otter held a meeting last week where residents suggested the Mine Safety and Health Administration wasn’t qualified to make the decision to close the mine. Otter simply promised to get federal officials to come to the area and hold a hearing.

Consider that inspectors issued 59 citations and 15 orders to Hecla and another 22 citations to a contractor. The violations included repeated failure to maintain ground support systems throughout the mine.

The cautions from the Post Register and Yurman about the need to make safety a primary concern could apply to Lucky Friday, too.

“Specialists in the field will tell you that a series of small, even unrelated incidents, are, statistically speaking, seen as precursors to much bigger ones that can lead to catastrophic outcomes including fatalities,” Yurman wrote. “Unless workers trust their management, and themselves, through peer-to-peer safety awareness, accidents will happen.”

Rocky Barker: 377-6484