
Organic Cat Litter Chief Suspect In Nuclear Waste Accident - timr
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/23/315279895/organic-kitty-litter-chief-suspect-in-nuclear-waste-accident
======
mikeryan
God I read that title wrong.

I read it as

"Organic Cat Litter Chief" \- "Suspect in Nuclear Waste Accident"

As opposed to

"Organic Cat Litter" \- "Chief Suspect in Nuclear Waste Accident"

I kept wondering when the CEO of a Cat Litter company was going to be blamed
for something.

~~~
Stratoscope
"I misread X as Y" comments don't seem to be popular here, but I was tempted
to post the same thing.

I read this headline exactly the same way as you, and I actually felt relieved
to know that the cat litter CEO was not a suspect in this accident!

I think it's a lesson for headline writers: Sure, write your headline as terse
and tight as you can make it. But at least re-read it a few times to make sure
it isn't ambiguous.

Another way to put it: "What would Experts Exchange think of this headline?"

------
CapitalistCartr
People laugh at the extreme detail the military uses to specify such item. I
spent six years in USAF and I've groaned at some of it. But we damn sure never
had this happen under SAC. And we were building nukes. Details matter.

~~~
timr
The SAC had plenty of nasty screw ups, including littering large areas of
Spain and (iirc) Greenland with plutonium dust from nuclear weapons accidents.
It's also pretty much dumb luck that we've never had an accidental detonation
of an SAC-controlled nuclear weapon:

[http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-
ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-
ebook/dp/B00C5R7F8G/)

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Yeah, we had amazing accodents until they finally decided to stop flying them
drop-ready. Bombing Franco's farmers was a major impetus towards that. But the
lack of accidental detonation was not luck; they were crazy overbuilt.

~~~
timr
If you read the book, you might change your mind about that. It spends a lot
of time documenting some really basic deficiencies -- bombs that could
detonate if overheated or struck by a single projectile, for example. A large
number of weapons were made with high explosives that weren't thermostable.
Others could detonate if dropped from a few feet. There were many deployed
ballistic missiles that were susceptible to lightning strikes. The arming
switches in SAC aircraft were, for years, simple open-loop circuits that had a
high probability of short-circuiting in an accident.

In fact, most of the book is about the attempts of the weapons labs to make
the arsenal safer. Most of those attempts were rebuffed by the military. The
SAC's strict policies definitely helped to prevent disaster, but if you read
about some of the incidents, it's clear that there was a lot of stupid luck
involved, too.

~~~
jloughry
British strategic nuclear weapon designs used mechanical safeguards, including
thousands of steel ball bearings poured in through a hole in the casing, which
made the bomb safe to carry but had to be drained out before use [1].

BLUE PEACOCK, however, used chickens [2].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Club#Design_features](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Club#Design_features)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken_power](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken_power)

~~~
arethuza
UK nukes used to use bicycle locks:

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7097101.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7097101.stm)

 _" The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming
switch and turning it through 90 degrees. There is no code which needs to be
entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the
Bomb."_

NB To this day the crews of UK Trident submarines can launch their weapons on
their own without requiring any codes to be transmitted to activate the
weapons.

~~~
andyjohnson0
_" To this day the crews of UK Trident submarines can launch their weapons on
their own without requiring any codes to be transmitted to activate the
weapons."_

Isn't this also the case with US Trident submarines? That is, codes
transmitted to the vessel are used to authenticate launch instructions, not to
enable the missiles to be armed. Otherwise the submarine would be unable to
launch in the event that land-based communications systems were destroyed.

~~~
arethuza
As far as I know, only the UK Tridents have this interesting arrangement. This
link on Permissive Action Links suggests that US Trident submarines need to
receive codes to unlock safes before they can launch:

 _" Instead of another party confirming a missile launch as in the case of
land-based ICBMs, the set of keys is distributed among the key personnel on
the submarine and are kept in safes (each of these crew members has access
only to his keys), some of which are locked by combination locks. Nobody on
board has the combination to open these safes - the unlock key comes as a part
of the launch order from the higher authority._"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link)

~~~
blueskin_
So they could theoretically drill/destroy/crack the safe in the case of an
emergency where codes could not be transmitted.

That is why British submarines have letters of last resort, to be opened and
followed if there are no communications.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort)

------
mikeash
How is this possible?

To take a random example I'm familiar with, making small modifications outside
certain small bounds requires a lot of paperwork and approval. This can be
something as simple as adding a tow hook to an airplane known to be good for
towing. If you're lucky and the modification has been done before and somebody
went through the trouble of getting the modification certified, you can take
advantage of the work they've already done, greatly reducing the trouble
involved as long as you can get permission from whoever got it certified. If
you're doing something totally new (or something other people have done, but
nobody got it certified for general use) then you have to file a form
describing what you're going to do, get it approved, do the work, get the
result inspected....

All this even for small aircraft where you'd be very hard-pressed to use them
to kill more than two people (including the pilot) even if for some reason you
had a goal of maximizing deaths.

Yet, when handling _nuclear waste_ , apparently people can just randomly
decide to completely change an important component used in the process?

Or was the change studied and approved by an engineer, but the problem was
missed? The article certainly doesn't make it sound like this happened, but it
could be an omission.

~~~
Retric
Bad instructions. Basicly someone said use brand X without specifying what
about X you needed. So, someone used brand X with a different formula and
never thought you needed to get approval because there was no change.

~~~
mikeash
It still seems completely crazy that someone would write instructions that way
in the first place. Surely you'd specify at least _something_ about the
composition as well?

------
tedsanders
I once talked to a scientist who worked on cat litter for a major corporation.
It was surprisingly interesting to hear about the chemistry and geology and
supply chain management of such a mundane substance. I guess the DOE
scientists running this project were not aware of these subtle issues of
chemistry and geology.

~~~
tragicAndCruel
Isn't organic cat litter made from corn?

~~~
tedsanders
They were in the business of manufacturing non-organic cat litter, the kind
made from a special type of clay.

~~~
keenerd
The clay is not that special, it is called bentonite. You can order it by the
pallet load, and it is a whole lot cheaper than cat litter. I'm surprised that
the spec did not call for bentonite directly, and that no one in these
comments has mentioned it either.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite)

------
lotsofmangos
Why the hell they are writing a spec with a commercial product name rather
than the material contained in it is beyond me. If the contractor knew they
were looking for a certain kind of clay rather than cat litter, this would be
nearly impossible.

~~~
gohrt
The problem seems to be that they didn't know exactly what they looking for,
or how to describe the set of acceptable clay-like substances.

This is an physical-science example of the "justification problem" \--
chemistry isn't computer science, we don't design all out components from the
elemental level; we discover and hack molecules, and identify them by
interpreting their behaviors (boiling point, what color smoke is produced when
mixed with some other stuff, etc) , and then we slap on a label that we _hope_
is correct). It's all a very statistical science, not irrefutable logic.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument)

~~~
lotsofmangos
_how to describe the set of acceptable clay-like substances._

Given the context, I would have hoped something involving a mass spectrometer
or something similar rather than buying something purely on the basis that it
is known to have the property of being suitable for cats to urinate into and
then hoping that they don't ever change the mixture on any products in the
range.

~~~
timr
I bet the thinking was something along the lines of _" kitty litter is an
inert absorptive material"_, and nobody really thought much about the
differences between _types_ of kitty litter, and whether or not they were
truly inert.

------
jqm
I think this is still speculative though.

From what I understand from local papers it is also believed a piece of salt
fell from the ceiling (waste is housed in an old salt mine).

~~~
timr
That's old information. This story is the current theory.

~~~
jqm
Oh. Do they have any evidence against the salt fall theory? My understanding
is that no one has been back down the hole since the event.

~~~
timr
They've been inside the room that had the leak, and they have video of the
ruptured drum. There were no problems with the mine walls, and the evidence
suggests the damage was heat-related:

[http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html)

~~~
jqm
You are much more up to date than I am.

Thanks for the cool link. Interesting read.

------
spikels
Hilarious - you can't make this stuff up. I thought we were told that organic
== better. I can just see it happening:

Vendor: "For an extra 95 cents per pound I can get it in Organic".

DoE Supply Clerk smiles and thinks of cute kittens. :)

------
ScottBurson
The strangest thing about this is that the organic cat litters are quite a bit
more expensive than clay. So it wasn't done to save money. What the reason
possibly could have been I cannot fathom.

~~~
yohui
Perhaps the brand they had been using switched to organic?

I suppose it's also possible that someone just assumed organic == better, or
there were both organic and non-organic versions of the same cat litter, and a
mix-up resulted when the premium product came up first in their search
results.

If they'd known what the litter would be used for, I would hope they'd have
been more careful, but I don't know at what level in the supply chain the
decision to switch was made.

------
cbsmith
Anyone else have a disturbing "Brawndo has got what plants crave" moment?

------
sp332
_" How come nobody caught this and raised a red flag?" asks_

It looks like they caught it to me.

~~~
natch
Catching it after it takes the entire facility out of commission doesn't
really count as catching it, does it?

