My first thought was that someone out sick, on vacation, or traveling might not have received these emails yet. Or perhaps the vials were left by someone who no longer works in TA-48. How often is the 'unused unspent' cabinet checked? Have all known vials of Rb and Cs been accounted for yet? And most important, the next time someone has unmarked vials of Rb or Cs to turn in they may go into the trash instead.
Delivered-To: ta48-outgoing@maillist.lanl.govprevious email, and photos:
To: ta48@lanl.gov
Cc: Gene Peterson [ejp@lanl.gov],
"Alex H. Lacerda" [lacerda@lanl.gov],
Michael Hundley [hundley@lanl.gov]
Subject: Last Chance: Rubidium and Cesium vials found in Kingdom, rm 346
From: Kevin Ott [kcott@lanl.gov]
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:57:38 -0600
All, no one has come forward to help us out by taking ownership of the vials of Rb and Cs that were found 'dumped' in the Kingdom chemical storage last week. I now have no choice but to go forward with an investigation. I am looking into seeing if we can take fingerprints off of the outer vial or inner ampoules.
So this is the last chance. Recall from your waste management training that the consequences for noncompliance with LANL, state, and federal hazardous waste regulations may include termination, civil actions with substantial fines, criminal actions including prison time, and administrative actions against the Laboratory, up
to including shutdown of operations. This is serious.
If you know of these materials or their owner, come forward now with no consequences -- we just want to be able to get these materials disposed of, which we cannot do easily without knowledge of process.
After Friday, no guarantees as to what might occur if we can identify the person who dumped these materials in our chemical cabinets.
Sorry this has to go this far. But this irresponsible behavior cannot be tolerated.
Kevin
Kevin Ott
Group Leader, MPA-MC
Materials Physics and Applications - Materials Chemistry
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
ph. 505 667-4600
fax 505 667-9905
Residents of TA-48. Last Thursday, two vials (see photos), one of Rb metal, the other of apparently partially oxidized Cs (from Acros) were found in the 'unused unspent' cabinet in room 346, TA-48 (the Kingdom). The vials have no barcodes, and no owner identified. These two facts will make these materials very difficult and potentially expensive to dispose of. If we can locate the owner, we can ascertain the history of these two vials, then we can help get rid of them fairly easily. We are willing to help, but first we need your help in identifying an owner who has the knowledge required to move the disposal ahead.
If you are the owner or have knowledge of these materials, please please please help us out and come forward, no harm done, no hard feelings.
Please contact me directly if you have any knowledge of these two vials.
Thanks, Kevin
Kevin Ott
Group Leader, MPA-MC
Materials Physics and Applications - Materials Chemistry
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
ph. 505 667-4600
fax 505 667-9905
52 comments:
"And most important, the next time someone has unmarked vials of Rb or Cs to turn in they may go into the trash instead."
There's a little lake that forms in the "colon" when it rains a lot. I'm thinking that could become the alkali metal burn site in the future. There's nothing prettier than red and blue fireworks reflecting off the water at night!
And most important, the next time someone has unmarked vials of Rb or Cs to turn in they may go into the trash instead.
...certainly after a thorough cleaning procedure with sulfochromic mixture.
This warrants posting on the blog? Rb and Cs metal dumped in the cold lab at TA-48. Good grief.
Fingerprints??? LOL! I smell idol threats and intimidations to get the owner to fess up. They will waste more time and spend more money trying to find the culprit than disposing of the used chemicals.
8:02 PM - it more ridiculus that that. Both Rb and Cs are pyrophoric and would ignite in air. Love to see how they "get the prints" off the inner vials as threatened.
This site is full of inert atmosphere boxes which would have made it easy to neutralize these pyrophoric metals. Someone was callously playing with their coworkers safety, and law enforcement should be brought in. I hope they were doing it out of ignorance, and not out of malice. However, from the sarcastistic tones of earlier commenters, I would wonder.
Yes, I know these metals are pyrophoric. However, the Cs appears to be already partially oxidized. So put the material back into the inert GB and be done with it. My sarcasm was merely directed at the silliness of the email and finger printing to find a culprit. Perhaps someone dumped the material so they wouldn't have to deal with the nightmare of disposal. Automatically assuming someone did this out of malice (knowing someone would get hurt)is even sillier than the intent of the original email.
And by the way, just because people make sarcastic comments on this blog, does not mean we have any ill will towards our fellow coworkers.
It's unfortunate that the photos didn't' come through. They show two 30-mL scintillation vials, each with a smaller vial inside containing a few grams of metal.
It is unfortunate that the Group Leader has taken this weird "nail the perp" stance. Half the population of TA-48 knows how to safely quench these materials and likely has IWD's in place to do this for their own research. If the email was driven by a safety concern, they'd have already taken these steps.
Instead, he just seems to want to lash out at his own troops. That's not healthy.
Now if someone dumped two bottles of Pu metal, now *that* would be a good story!
Actually the anger, hostility, and "f*ck-you all - I will get you" sentiment in the e-mails suggests that this guy needs anger management therapy or even a fitness-for-duty analysis.
This just represents the profoundly poor management at the lab.
The problem with this approach is.
(1) It will most assuredly assure that if someone knows what happened they will definitely not come foward now. There is a very good chance that that someone probably
simply forgot, which makes the whole email pointless.
(2) The "I am a vindictive" manager
tone will insure that when something unintentional occurs that it might be better to cover it up than deal with crazed managers. Remember if people feel the system is corrupt than it is only a matter of time that everyone has to act the same way in order to get by. Tit for Tat is always the equilibrium solution.
(3) The tone of the email seems to be directed at everyone, and has the sense of "I do not trust anyone under me and I hate all of you". It is truly disgusting. Lashing out at your own troops never works and never has worked.
Some things never change. The "it's cheaper to toss it in the trash" mentality is the same mentality that doesn't want to adhere with security, safety, or employment rules. So what if others are put at risk or denied their rights in the process? The "best and brightest" simply “don't need no stinking rules” to interfere with their brilliance. And we wonder why we’ve lost the confidence of the U.S. Congress and neighboring communities.
The response of "this isn't a big deal, let's just take care of it and move on" is not within the purview of any responsible LANL manager. Nor should it be. Laws, regulations and policies were violated. Whether there was malicious intent is not relevant, except possibly for determining appropriate punishment.
11:21 am is correct. Whoever did this is exhibiting an attitude that will eventually result in much greater harm. That person must be found and punished.
Interesting array of responses, but I don't see anyone seriously proposing "toss it in the trash" as 11:32 and 11:37 would have us believe. The closest comment to this was Pinky's and I read that one as cautionary. Responses 1:30 and 1:48 were obviously tongue in cheek from experienced chemists. (Fess up now - we've all done a "flame test" or two in grad school!)
I think 11:13 really nailed it. Ott could have used this as an opportunity to ensure that waste disposal procedures in his group are clear, consistent and workable and that the deployed waste management support is adequate.
Instead he goes out for blood. Nobody wins in this environment.
As someone who is not familiar with TA-48, I am confused about the phrase, "Kingdom, rm 346". Is this a real building? Is there a "Queendom" building also. Perhaps someone's ego got the best of him when the building was named? Or is the building ID classified? No SM-nn building, just Kingdom, Queendom, Dukedom, etc.?
This is a fine example of why LANL is doomed. Reality check: neither Cs nor Rb is very dangerous as proven by generations of chemists who've 'played' with both. But LANS doesn't care about real safety, only THE RULES and they will beat everybody into compliance at the expense of useful work for the Country. When the bureaucrats have destroyed everything the then useless LANL will be shut down.
The Kingdom is a large room in RC-1. At one point it wasn't much more than a shed roof and a wall, filling in an open space between the original early 50's radiochemistry building and the hot cell wing which was added for the Rover program.
Building residents used to mark off sections of the room to store their valuable treasures (aka crap), i.e. it's where each person had their own little Kingdom. Then about a decade ago it was renovated into cold-lab space for TA-21 refugees.
Actually 2:45, it basically shows that the "great chemist" Ott claims to be is wrong since he evidently knows nothing about Cs and Rb. Clearly, he is just a big baby.
Ott is just a bully. He uses tactics like this to take people that he does not like out. In this manner he can pretend that he is the "victim" and claim "innocense". My guess is that he already has his "target" picked out and these e-mails are just meant to give the impression of what a decent guy he is.
4:59 PM - Ott is a sexist pig who has managed to "bully" out every TSM female who was ever in the group whether it be a C or MPA group. He hates women and goes after them with a vengence. No woman at PA time has EVER done as well as his "male-friends" even if they bring in most of the money. I truly hope DOE is reading the blog ... this guy is bad news, just ask the poor female PD (Jamie Tournear) who got fired by him over the aqua regia incident, which her fault was simply reporting bad behavior of her superiors.
An addendum - I was the LAST female TSM to leave MPA-10. I was discriminated at PA time for being pregnant. Nice, huh?
Join the club 6:43 pm. I was discriminated against in 2002 during PA time as a pregnant TSM. Totally different directorate but same idea. My GL told me during my performance interview that "due to my circumstances this year, he could not give me a higher score....blah blah blah."
Was Jamie actually "fired" or was it that nobody wanted to stick their necks out and pick her up as a TSM?
However "safe" a couple of grams of Cs and Rb might be according to some of the macho posters here, the cabinets in the kingdom are full of large bottles of highly flammable organic solvents. For non-chemists, you should just consider them to be gallon jugs of gasoline. The kingdom adjoins the hot cells. A fire there would be really really bad, and would release lots of very high activity materials.
6:02 - give it a rest. Jamie left long before Ott was GL.
12:58 - "the kingdom" name was given in sarcasm. The kingdom is no place anyone wants to work.
2:45 pm: "But LANS doesn't care about real safety, only THE RULES and they will beat everybody into compliance at the expense of useful work for the Country."
News flash: "THE RULES" are important. If you don't obey "THE RULES" you get into trouble, lose your job, and/or go to jail. It does not matter whether you agree with "THE RULES." It does not matter whether you know more than those who made "THE RULES." People who ignore "THE RULES" are known as sociopaths, or worse, and are hunted down. If you have this attitude and are still alive, and not incarcerated, you have been very lucky. Don't push it.
BTW1: What makes you think an employer doesn't have the right to make and enforce rules?
BTW2: Don't capitalize "country." It just makes you look like an ignorant hick.
7:55 PM, not true, Ott was the GL when Jaime Tournear "left" LANL. As usual, Ott Ott is such a dipshit and is trying to distance himself from any controversy. I guess that is why Tournear named him in as one of the defendents in her Lawsuit against LANL, which BTW she won!
"..11:21 am is correct. Whoever did this is exhibiting an attitude that will eventually result in much greater harm. That person must be found and punished..."
Your amigdala is working overtime.
Take a chill pill. The a---holes in Congress and DOE are not worth the grief.
"Yipppee Aye Oh KI AY"
The butthead girl
Off subject, but what has happened to the all-important CHEMLOG? Last I tried to update my inventory, the software was as buggy and user-nonfriendly as was year before. Remember those barcode readers, that when you added a chem, it lost the entire inventory unless you rescanned every stinkin' bottle? And John Tapia left. It was sooo important a few years ago, now it seems to be a legacy. Yet NMED isn't backing down on audits.
7:55 responding to 10:51.
I stand corrected. I pulled the court papers, and Tournear did sue LANL, Ott, McCleskey, Majidi, and Kiplinger. According to the court papers, Ott and McCleskey were the GL's at various times during the period from the aqua regia through the firing.
Her lawsuit rambled on and on. The case was settled. Do you know for how much?
12:58 - "the kingdom" name was given in sarcasm. The kingdom is no place anyone wants to work.
Because of conditions, LANL should probably be renamed "The Kingdom."
Is there any organization at LANL that functions responsibly?
7/26/08 9:05 PM
You sound like the sociopath.
People do obey the rules, however like all places unintential incidents occur. These can occur due to human error. The point of rational and clear rules is that they can substantially reduce the human error by eliminating confusing or contridictory situations. A healthy orginaztion will always encourage input and critical comments
about the rules. There is a very good chance that the person who did this is not aware of what they did. It is still an incident that should be taken seriously and something did go wrong however it is highly unlickly that this was done deliberately.
You seem to be the same troll who hates the people at LANL. Most likely you are just a
bitter ex-employee. Come on lets hear your story as why you are so great and the rest of the world is wrong.
I guarantee that whoever is found guilty of this horrific crime will have almost nothing to do with it.
Punish the innocent is alive an well.
Tournear won the lottery and then some -
"However "safe" a couple of grams of Cs and Rb might be according to some of the macho posters here, the cabinets in the kingdom are full of large bottles of highly flammable organic solvents."
Hm, funny that Ott's emails don't mention any concern about storage compatibility.
So where have the Cs and Rb been stored over the past week and a half since they were discovered? Have they been moved into a drybox, or are they still sitting in the cabinet that you now claim is soooooooooo very dangerous?
7/27/08 10:08 AM wrote "I guarantee that whoever is found guilty of this horrific crime will have almost nothing to do with it."
Most certainly. Ott probably already knows who he wants to have "go down" for the crime. He will get his way - the vindictive and back-stabbing bastard always does.
I have a question - who is the RAD for this area? Shouldn't the RAD be handling this? Why is the RAD not smacking down this GL for his boorish and unprofessional behavior?
I don't know where the metals are sitting now, 11:11. The chemical incompatibility would have been noted by previous GLs, but I would not imagine it would occur to Ott the caretaker.
This was not an innocent mistake 9:30. You don't accidentally peel off barcodes and slip pyrophoric metals into someone else's cabinet.
12:51 PM - his AD is Seestrom but I have been on committees with this guy and he refers to her as an idiot who doesn't understand chemistry so my guess is that she is letting him run the show.
Elemental Rb and Cs? Wow! Can I have them? Please?
These are great at parties. Just drop them in a bucket of water and stand back. Fireworks!
Hi 12:51 PM - the RAD is actually Neu and not Seestrom. Ott made it very clear during the transition that he hated Neu and did not want to be in her directorate. As people have indicated, Ott does not like women in science and it is doubtful he would work under them. Don't know if Neu knows about this - but by Monday she probably will.
9:30 am: "You seem to be the same troll who hates the people at LANL. Most likely you are just a
bitter ex-employee. Come on lets hear your story as why you are so great and the rest of the world is wrong."
You really don't want to know. I am an ex-employee, but not "bitter" - I retired with plenty of UC retirement funds - never another problem with money for the rest of my life. I don't hate people at LANL; I just pity those who can't leave. My LANL record (which I won't be sharing with you) is exemplary. My professional bibliography is probably more extensive than yours (as an employee of LANS) will ever be.
"7/27/08 10:25 PM"
Talk is cheap. Put your name down.
Certain names like Chris Mechels do not carry any weight. "I just pity those who can't leave." Sorry to burst your bubble but just about everyone can leave Los Alamos and find jobs elsewhere. Every six months some people leave and some people arrive. Are you the same idiot who keeps saying anyone who can leave has already left? You have been saying this crap for four years now and every year people find other jobs so you really have no idea what you are talking about.
Come on give us a name or least give us your real agenda if you are going to slam the good people of Los Alamos
10:25 is Alfred Sattelberger who left LANL in disgrace but managed to get himself a senior Lab fellow rank before he left due to his friendship with Terry Wallace, who still to this day calls Alfred his mentor...
Latest rumor is that Ott is going forward with fingerprinting.
So the next obvious question is:
Assuming he can even get prints, what's he going to do with them? If the vials had been dumped in a RCRA waste storage area, then he might have grounds to claim a violation of federal law.
But at worst, this seems to be a violation of labeling regulations under oSHA chemical hygiene plan standards (someone check me on this) and thus the much-feared 10 CFR 851 blanket regulation ("obey all standards, even when they contradict").
"Unused unspent" chemicals would clearly not have gone through a waste determination yet, so they can't reasonably fall under RCRA.
You can go after individuals with RCRA (cf. all the threats in Ott's email) but I'm not sure 10 CFR 851 allows that.
Anyone got a better handle on this? I'm trying to get at a legal basis for Ott to even request that building residents give up their prints for an investigation. And yes, I know the clearance files have this info, but is there a basis for Ott to pursue that channel?
Or he is just acting like a gigantic blowhard?
The punishments and intimidation shown in this ugly story will continue until the last technical staff member has finally decided to leave LANL or has been fired by LANS.
According to the LANS play book, if you lack the ability to manage an institution with good managers and effective techniques (as LANS clearly does) then substitute it with a mixture of crazy policies, witch hunts, fear and anxiety, and generous applications of smoke and mirrors. This is the direction which LANS has decided to take at LANL. It's also the way NNSA wants LANL to be run. The effects of all this can be seen in the extremely low morale levels of the remaining staff.
If you can, seriously consider getting out of LANL while you still have a moderate chance to sell your home. Homes are still selling in Los Alamos County (~100 since the start of this year), but within a year or so it may become impossible to sell a home in Los Alamos at any price.
There are scientific institutions to work for with much better management who will value your contributions to US national security. LANL is clearly not one of these better institutions.
One suspects that some minor line editing could have been done to reduce the length of this "email". Need some help with that, Frank?
I didn't edit it because, umm... I didn't want to smudge any fingerprints that may have been on the email.
Yeah, that's it!
So has anyone been finger printed yet?
To answer 8/2/08 6:43 PM's question: Nope, the idiot has no legal grounds to get finger prints of everyone at TA-48. Ott has finally shown the world what an f-in bigot and sexist pig he is. Although several people have left his group and the Lab, those vials couln't have possibly come from his Arian group ...
"So has anyone been finger printed yet?"
They took my fingerprints at the badge office when I submitted the paperwork for my clearance, so I would have to say yes.
6:13 pm: "Ott has finally shown the world what an f-in bigot and sexist pig he is. Although several people have left his group and the Lab, those vials couln't have possibly come from his Arian group ..."
"Arian"??? Did you mean "Aryan"?? Talk about bigoted. Do you even know what the term means?
Please point out the elements in the email that reveal 1)bigotism, or 2) sexism.
To 8/3/08 8:50 PM - I work at 48 and don't have a clearance and I don't recall getting fingerprinted.
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