Center’s alarming findings on safety issues at nuclear labs drawing wide attention via The Center for Public Integrity

‘Nuclear Negligence’ series highlighted by media outlets nationwide

In the summer of 2011, Los Alamos National Laboratory presented a happy self-portrait to the public. The lab’s news releases bragged of promotions, awards, pacts with neighboring Native American tribes and great feats of science that spilled from the design of the nation’s nuclear weapons.

But that year something alarming happened at Los Alamos that the lab kept quiet. A pair of workers with cavalier attitudes nearly doomed a room full of colleagues by stuffing so much plutonium into a small space that they came close to triggering an accidental nuclear chain reaction, all to get some photos.

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We presented the results of our year-long investigation over the past two weeks in five articles totaling around 20,000 words, co-published with The Washington Post, USA Today, a variety of Gannett newspapers, Scientific American, Salon and many regional newspapers and radio/television stations. A video about the project prepared by CPI and Gannett can be found at the top of the Gannett story here.

And a National Public Radio interview with Jeff Smith for NPR’s “All Things Considered” program on June 27 can be found here. A member of the House of Representatives from Nevada has called for congressional hearings into the issues we raised.

Malone has been interviewed about the series by the Washington bureau of Sinclair Broadcasting, which has one of the country’s largest networks. And on Friday, Smith will also appear on the NPR radio program, “Science Friday,” hosted by Ira Flatow. It is live and will air at 2:20 p.m.

• Nuclear Weapons Site Alarms Shut Off, Scientists Inhale Uranium via Scientific American