Los Alamos National Laboratory Researchers Accidentally Blow up Building with a Cannon

[n2doc]

December 23, 2009

According to a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Occurrence Report, “Shock and Detonation Physics Group researchers heard a loud unusual noise from Technical Area 15, Building 562 after firing a shot from a large-bore powder gun (LBPG).” The researchers accidentally blew a building apart at Technical Area-15, on December 16, 2009 while testing a gun which acts like a Civil War cannon.

While no one was hurt, sources advise POGO that there was over $3 million in damage to property. The explosion blew the doors off the building -- which is described in the report as, "two doors were propelled off the facility."

The Facility Operations Director "declared a management concern due to the significant facility structural damage incurred resultant of the shot." Parts of the cannon were found outside the building.

"I must say that this is a new twist in the long history of screw-ups by Los Alamos," said POGO’s Senior Investigator, Peter Stockton. “I have no idea in the world why they have a gun like this, let alone testing it.”


http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/alerts/nuclear-security-safety/nss-lanl-20091223.html

I think I know why they had a gun like that.. because it's FUN! Somebody's gonna lose their job over this...

[tabatha]

1. Too bad about the expense - but that is a funny story.

[El Supremo]

2. I think they had too much time on their hands.

A good reason to cut back funds for this mostly outdated facility.

[Sancho]

3. How far did the potato go?

:nuke:

[Hekate]

4. "You could put your eye out with that!" Guys, um, guys--that's not a Daisy air rifle.

:wow: :spray:

Hekate

[catnhatnh]

5. 2 doors=3 Million...

anyone wanna get that contract?

[hughee99]

7. Perhaps the incident started something like this...

Person 1: "We could just finish our project if we could get an extra 2.5 million"
Person 2: "Where the hell are we going to get that sort of money for THIS project"
Person 3: "Why don't we blow up something that's relatively easy to fix, then say it takes $3 million to fix, and use the rest for our project."
Person 1: "We're going to have the sweetest self-loading potato gatling gun in the world. This will be a huge hit at the memorial day party. We are SO getting laid."

[Ian David]

11. These were the doors...

[AnnieBW]

6. Boom today, boom tomorrow

There's always a boom tomorrow.

[pokerfan]

15. Someone's got to keep some perspective around here.

One of these days... boom!

[thunder rising]

8. Hey guys I have this old cannon and I want to try out some of this new powder in it ... let's do it!

Famous last words.

[denbot]

9. You can make some pretty cool compounds with energetics.

My guess would be they were mixing a batch of something or other using explosives or the energy from explosives like the old school apothacaries would use a mortar and pedestal.

Some very cool research comes from those labs..

[Ian David]

10. If large-bore powder guns are outlawed, only clumsy Los Alamos scientists will have LBPGs.

I'll tell ya though... that burglar will never rob another research facility again!

[caraher]

12. Well, here's what the gun is for...

The detonation physics research group's web page says:

High explosives are metastable compounds. Violent reactions can be initiated by heat and/or impact. Shock initiation is concerned with studying the evolution of reaction in the explosive caused by a pressure pulse (shock wave) originating from either impact or an explosive source.

DE-9's studies in this field have resulted in collaborations with experimenters and theoretical and computational scientists from Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia national labs, the Defense Department, and the United Kingdom's Atomic Weapons Establishment. The combined goal of the experimental and theoretical work is to produce better physics models of this aspect of high explosives' behavior for use in hydrocode computations. This is an important component of the science-based stockpile stewardship of nuclear weapons.

A current major effort involves studying the plastic-bonded explosive (PBX) 9502, a LANL-developed insensitive high explosive. The experiments are challenging because very high initial pressures—and thus very high projectile velocities—are required to initiate detonation. In addition, the large magnetic gauges combined with long run distances require that large explosive samples be used, which requires a large bore gun. These variables tax current gun technology and challenge the experimenters' creativity.

The overall configuration for our shock initiation experiments was developed at LANL in the 1980s. It shares gauging principles in common with those first used in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

They also have a link to video of a shot of the gun (clearly not the ill-fated firing of the OP!).

I think it makes POGO look bad to have a spokesman give such a flip response to the accident. I didn't know why they have such a gun, either, but it took me about 3 minutes to find out. Whether this research program is worth pursuing, is being pursued incompetently - those are questions well-worth asking, but just saying Los Alamos is a crummy old lab and you have no idea what they're trying to do is more a declaration of personal ignorance than a meaningful criticism.

[struggle4progress]

13. "Don't worry your little head about this! We all know exactly what we're doing! ...

Oops!"

[tinrobot]

14. They've been watching too much "Mythbusters"