
How the wrong cat litter took down a nuclear waste repository - sohkamyung
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i20/wrong-cat-litter-took-down.html?h=-472621416
======
mchannon
Missing from this article is the most fascinating thing about this story- why
someone thought it was a good idea to make the cat litter substitution that
made this whole mess possible.

In Los Alamos, those charged with repackaging the waste were hearing a speech
by an expert on the matter. The expert warned they should be using "INorganic
cat litter", which they already were. What a member of the group heard was "AN
organic cat litter".

The two look very different in print, but when spoken, they're often
indistinguishable to a non-chemist. When the discussion made its way to memos
and emails, the die was cast.

~~~
Evolved
They may be indistinguishable but common sense still applies when asking for
clarification. For example, I work with folks of a certain intellect where I
have to ask very specific and pointed questions that do not contain
substantial detail in each question in order to clarify something or to get an
answer I need.

When that conversation happened, it should have ended with, "just to clarify,
I should, or should not, use organic cat litter?" That would have cleared it
up.

Furthermore, “It would have been much clearer if they had said an inorganic
zeolite sorbent,” Hobbs says.

Wouldn't one argue that a better way to explain it would be to specify
nonorganic kitty litter since that would clear up any confusion whether
written or spoken?

~~~
kevhito
How about not sending a non-expert to the grocery store with a post-it note
for supplies when packaging radioactive material for long-term storage.
Besides, "organic" when in the grocery store means something completely
different any way -- ironically, the organic (wheat-based) product could
easily be "non-organic" (meaning not certified to avoid certain pesticides,
fertilizers, etc.), while the non-organic (clay-based) product might be
labeled "organic" (meaning no pesticides).

Really, how about having a specific written signoff procedure in place, where
all supplies must be checked before purchase by a trained expert who knows the
difference between organic and inorganic / clay vs wheat, signed off in
writing against a checklist developed by experts, then checked again by a
separate trained expert when delivered with another signoff, then checked
again by a third export when actually used.

~~~
DanBC
> how about having a specific written signoff procedure in place, where all
> supplies must be checked before purchase by a trained expert who knows the
> difference between organic and inorganic / clay vs wheat, signed off in
> writing against a checklist developed by experts, then checked again by a
> separate trained expert when delivered with another signoff, then checked
> again by a third export when actually used.

Multiple inspection is a known failure point. A thinks any errors they make
will be caught by B and C. B thinks A knows what s/he's doing, and thinks any
errors that slip by B will be caught by C. C thinks A and B know what they're
doing and so no errors will have reached C.

The boss that recruited A, B, and C to their position pulled the most accurate
workers from the shop floor - because you need the inspectors to be better
than the shop floor.

Thus quality of product supplied to inspection is reduced; the inspectors are
now very busy; and that leads them to shift product through (someone else will
catch it; someone else has already caught the problems).

What you need is to give an accurate instruction, and to give people to halt
if they're unclear what's meant.

------
nkurz
Confusion about choosing the chemically appropriate kitty litter comes up more
frequently than one might expect. While a zeolite clay based litter is the
best choice for nuclear waste, the message here isn't that it's the best
choice for all purposes. It turns out that different applications require
different kitty litters!

Oyster mushrooms can be grown on lots of "plant based" substrates. One easily
available substrate is kitty litter made from recycled newspaper, such as the
"Yesterday's News" brand. If you to use a zeolite based litter here (even if
it had organic certifications) your mushrooms would grow poorly if at all:
[http://www.namyco.org/docs/grow_oyster_mushrooms_on_kitty_li...](http://www.namyco.org/docs/grow_oyster_mushrooms_on_kitty_litter_illustrated.pdf).
But for bonsai, both clay and recycled newspaper would be a disaster. Here,
you need a litter made from "diatomaceous earth", such as Tesco's "Low Dust
Lightweight Catlitter":
[http://www.bonsai4me.com/Basics/Basicscatlitter.htm](http://www.bonsai4me.com/Basics/Basicscatlitter.htm).
Tomato seedlings have about the same requirements as bonsai:
[http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=22329](http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=22329).

I mention these partly as a joke, but there actually is a deep commonality
here. All of these are real world situations where the specific type of cat
litter used has implications, and in all of them, despite the authors' strong
desire for precision and clarity, you find forums full of people who take the
"shortcut" of using the wrong type of cat litter and then complaining that it
doesn't work. I'm not sure what the solution is, but in the future it sure
would be great if we could troubleshoot the instructions in the mushroom,
tomato and bonsai communities rather than jumping straight to nuclear waste
disposal.

Does anyone have examples of other communities making odd uses of specific
types of kitty litter?

~~~
dandelany
Litter made of bentonite clay can also be used as a refractory clay for
cheaply lining the inside of a DIY blacksmithing forge!
[https://aaapirateblacksmith.com/2012/09/12/building-the-
tren...](https://aaapirateblacksmith.com/2012/09/12/building-the-trench-forge-
and-a-dirt-cheap-clay-recipe/)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
It also makes an OK "green sand" replacement for casting metal.

~~~
throwanem
I've heard similar claims of that "magic sand" or whatever it's called when
you mix fine sand and silicone oil. The results seem to speak reasonably well
of the method, if AvE's attempt [1] is any guide.

Might save some grinding, at any rate.

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sEc5Jak9jsg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sEc5Jak9jsg)

------
legulere
The whole story can be shortened down to two sentences:

> Investigators traced a series of internal communications in which the
> specifications for “kitty litter/zeolite clay” were transformed into “kitty
> litter (clay),” the report says. Combined with inadequate technical review,
> this resulted in LANL workers filling waste containers with a mixture of
> nitrate salts and sWheat Scoop, a cat litter that is 100% wheat, according
> to its manufacturer.

~~~
brudgers
Removing "zeolite" is consistent with just about every popular piece of advice
on how to write:

1\. Don't use jargon.

2\. Remove unnecessary words.

3\. Write a third grade level.

So someone comes along and sees the phrase "kitty litter/zeolite clay" and
decides that its author does not know how to write based on its author not
following the rules and applies syntactic rules without understanding the
semantics (in this case the semantics of nuclear chemistry).

~~~
beaconstudios
you'd think that at the level of nuclear chemistry, "kitty litter" would be
considered a pretty inexact term for a very serious role.

~~~
brudgers
Traditionally, it has been exact. Physicists are ordinary people and use
ordinary language to talk to other physicists. It became inexact when the low
bidder bought wheat waste and called it "kitty litter" and ignored "(clay)".

~~~
ScottBurson
Um -- as someone who has bought Swheat Scoop for my cats for almost 20 years
-- I can assure you it's not the low-cost option. Clay is much cheaper.

~~~
brudgers
I'm not disagreeing. However, I would not be surprised if the price ratios at
retail differ from those at bulk wholesale and at moments in the spot market.
My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt
and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was
supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a
rational economic actor.

~~~
nkurz
_My suspicion is based on some experience with the spot market for fill dirt
and the evidence here that kitty litter made from wheat byproducts was
supplied by the low cost bidder and the premise that the low cost bidder was a
rational economic actor._

Your suspicion sounds plausible, but looks to be directly contradicted by the
Department of Energy's post-investigation report. To the contrary of this
being a decision made by the low cost bidder, the problems with the process
started with a mistake in the specification that was produced by Los Alamos
National Security LLC, the private company specifies the proper operating
procedures at the national lab:

"When LANS began using this procedure to process nitrate salt wastes in
September 2011, it did not perform a USQD [Undetermined Safety Questions
Determination], as required, because the change from inorganic to organic
absorbent was incorrectly determined to be an administrative (minor) change."

"In one particular instance, a conduct-of-operations SME [subject matter
expert], working outside of his/her area of responsibility, added new text to
DOP-0233 that included using organic kitty litter as an absorbent, as opposed
to the inorganic zeolite material discussed previously in technical team
meetings."

"In the previous example, the SME's addition of the text to DOP-0233, Section
10.6, which included the word 'organic', was submitted informally as a 'minor'
comment, rather than an 'essential' comment that would have required explicit
concurrence from the entire SME team."

Unless the report is wrong, or unless the SME who made the change was actually
working in deep cover for a kitty litter producer with a surplus of wheat,
this looks to be an error of knowledge and process, not a cost-cutting measure
by a low bidder.

[https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20co...](https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Posting%20copy%20LANS%20PNOV%202-18-16%20%28NEA-2016-01%29.pdf)

~~~
brudgers
It appears that organic was added alongside inorganic. Which means that the
low bid was for organic litter. Having written specs, alternatives to
established specifications are often proposed by vendors.

Normally for government specifications, opportunities to enjoy pitches by
vendors to have their products added to the specification are not allowed due
to the potential appearance of a conflict of interest. On the other hand, an
LLC might not have quite as rigid a protocol...and establishing an LLC might
even be done to avoid having rigid protocols around bidding and vendors.

Now I could be completely off base and a low level employee went cowboy all on
their own due to some previous knowledge of organic kitty liter and the
economics of its bulk availability. The center of the distribution when specs
get changed to allow an alternative technology is more commonly customer
eduction by vendors.

------
nathanvanfleet
Kind of funny that I have actually had the same problem. I collect succulent
plants and when you get to a certain point you need to start making your own
soil mix.

One of the best ways for that is to use soil and hot-fired clay / diatomaceous
earth. Which is not really easy to find as a product. Funny enough cat litter
can be just that. However, there are many cat litters out there which are made
from a wide variety of things. So it's really difficult to eek out the right
stuff.

Like the article says it can be organic material, or it can be clay that turns
to mush when it gets wet. There are other materials out there though, like
Turface, which is always high fired clay, or oil-dry materials from auto
supply stores, which varies a lot like the cat litter.

Either way it kind of seems insane that they are acquiring this material
instead of finding a direct and reliable source for the exact material they
want.

------
HarryHirsch
It's a wonderful example why people should be educated far beyond their pay
grade. Any mildly trained chemist would know that combining nitric acid and
organic material is setting oneself up for an explosion. They should have
reached for the Andon cord right tbere.

------
prbuckley
This mistake cost over half a billion dollars!

"An October 2014 report from the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector
General points to a change in the packaging procedure at LANL that specified
organic cat litter, when an inorganic sorbent was likely intended.
Investigators traced a series of internal communications in which the
specifications for “kitty litter/zeolite clay” were transformed into “kitty
litter (clay),” the report says. Combined with inadequate technical review,
this resulted in LANL workers filling waste containers with a mixture of
nitrate salts and sWheat Scoop, a cat litter that is 100% wheat, according to
its manufacturer. “It would have been much clearer if they had said an
inorganic zeolite sorbent,” Hobbs says. “It’s been a very expensive mistake,
costing at least half a billion dollars.”

------
wordupmaking
> We need to tell the story so that hopefully it won’t happen again.

And I'll need to bookmark this just for the lack of points and the deafening
silence, for the next time I see some grandstanding on HN about luddites being
paranoid about nuclear waste and dumb one-off accidents.

> LANL generated nearly 700 drums with a similar waste mixture that includes
> the organic cat litter. Drums with similar mixtures were isolated and are
> monitored, DOE says.

> “Why didn’t more than one drum react as that drum did?” Hobbs asks. “Never
> to my knowledge did we firmly establish that there is something completely
> unique about 68660.”

It's an interesting puzzle, but not one for you and me to worry about. Vote
Vault Tec.

~~~
wbl
Suppose the drum broke. How many people would die?

~~~
Retric
99.9% of the time, none. They are stored in a bunker far from people.

A large part of why nuclear power is so expensive is because safety is
considered so important. It's hard to get good numbers, but chances are more
people have died constructing reactors and mining / refining ore etc. than
from nuclear accidents. The difference is simply what people are less
concerned when a heavy object falls on someone else.

~~~
Teknoman117
And how many people have died inhaling fumes from coal fired plants and mining
coal?

~~~
vilhelm_s
In 2010 it was around 13,200 deaths/year from particulate emissions[1]. This
is actually a big improvement, stricter regulations brought it down from
30,000 deaths/year in 2000 [2]. I should say that these numbers are surely not
exact, there are big uncertainties both in the atmospheric modelling (how far
the particles propagate) and in how dangerous the exposure is. But it's
probably the right order of magnitude, there is a different report from the
National Academy of Sciences in 2010 which arrived at a similar (but slightly
lower) number [3].

The deaths from particulate emissions are not even necessarily the biggest
problem with coal: if you price out the externalities, the cost of climate
change (from CO₂ emissions) is the biggest item [4].

[1]
[http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/view/138](http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/view/138)
[2]
[http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/view/8](http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/view/8)
[3] [http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/hi...](http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/hidden.pdf) [4]
[http://xhxhxhx.tumblr.com/post/157192261427/alright-two-
impo...](http://xhxhxhx.tumblr.com/post/157192261427/alright-two-important-
corrections-first-the)

