Pantex Plant

An aerial photograph of a portion of the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas

The Pantex plant is America's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility and is charged with maintaining the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. The facility is located on a 16,000 acre (65 km²) site 17 miles (27 km) northeast of Amarillo, in Carson County, Texas in the Panhandle of Texas. The plant is managed and operated for the United States Department of Energy by BWXT Pantex and Sandia National Laboratories. BWXT Pantex is a limited liability enterprise of Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group, Honeywell and Bechtel.

History

Conventional weapons being assembled at Pantex in 1944

The Pantex plant was originally constructed as a conventional bomb plant for the United States Army during the early days of World War II. The Pantex Ordnance Plant was authorized February 24, 1942. Construction was completed on November 15, 1942 and caused workers from all over the U.S. to flock to Amarillo for jobs building bombs.

Pantex was abruptly deactivated after the war ended. It remained vacant until 1949, when Texas Technological College in Lubbock (now Texas Tech University) purchased the site for $1. Texas Tech used the land for experimental cattle-feeding operations.

In 1951, at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Department of Energy (DOE)), the Army exercised a recapture clause in the sale contract and reclaimed the main plant and 10,000 acres (40 km²) of surrounding land for use as a nuclear weapons production facility. The Atomic Energy Commission refurbished and expanded the plant at a cost of $25 million. The remaining 6,000 acres (24 km²) of the original site were leased from Texas Tech in 1989.

Technicians perform final assembly on a nuclear warhead

Also in 1989, the DOE Rocky Flats Plant, located near Golden, Colorado, was deactivated as a plutonium processing center due to environmental concerns, urban encroachment, and protest by activist groups and loss of mission when Congress did not approve the next generation weapon design. The deactivation of Rocky Flats necessitated the interim storage of plutonium at Pantex.

In 1994, the Pantex plant was listed as a Superfund site. The US Environmental Protection Agency has not determined what contaminants and exposure risks are at the facility, but has determined that groundwater contamination was not under control at that time. Cleanup construction was completed in 2010, and EPA currently lists this site as "Current human exposures at this site are under control" and "Contaminated ground water migration is under control".

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in 1998 documented a statistically significant incidence of increased cancer rates and low birth weights in the some of the counties surrounding Pantex, however the counties closest to the plant (Armstrong and Carson) had no significant increase in cancer rates. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that the Pantex Plant was not likely to be associated with these findings because of the multifactorial nature of birth defects and cancer, and the lack of measurable contamination coming from the Pantex facility.

Pantex employed approximately 3,600 people in 2010 and had a budget of $600 million for fiscal year 2010.

Controversy

In the early 1980s, local Bishop Leroy Matthiesen began encouraging Catholic workers at the plant to leave their jobs, offering financial support to those who did. In 1986 peace activists purchased 20 acres (81,000 m²) adjacent to the facility to create The Peace Farm, as "a visible witness against weapons of mass destruction". It continues to draw attention to the plant in its current role as the lead facility maintaining and modifying the US nuclear arsenal.

A non-profit watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), claimed that in 2005 Pantex workers could have caused a nuclear explosion when they improperly applied too much pressure on an obsolete W-56 warhead while attempting to dismantle it. POGO said unidentified experts knowledgeable about the event told it of the danger. It also said requirements for plant technicians to work up to 72 hours a week contributed to the incident. The group made public an anonymous letter, purportedly from Pantex workers, which warned that long hours and efforts to increase output were causing dangerous conditions. BWXT said it would look into the complaint about unsafe conditions, but declined further comment. The U.S. Department of Energy fined BWXT $110,000 for incidents involving the bomb, but did not mention any possibility of an explosion or identify the type of warhead.

Another controversy resulted from federal requirements for physical standards for security guards and the requirement that guards must wear bulletproof vests and carry rifles throughout their 24-hour shift. The guard's union objects to these new requirements. Guards make an average of $72,000/year with 800+ hours of overtime.

500 guards walked off the site and went on strike just after midnight on April 20, 2007. After 45 days of intense negotiations, a new 5 year contract was agreed upon between the Pantex Guards Union and BWXT.

Lockdown

At around 8am on January 15, 2010, the plant was put on lockdown due to a "potential security situation," Shannon reported. The lockdown was caused by employees enjoying a day of fowl hunting on their day off. The employees claim to have had permission to use the adjacent land.

Pantex on Film

In 1995, filmmaker George Ratliff made a documentary called Plutonium Circus. The film follows various people to give their viewpoint of having a nuclear weapons facility in their backyard. The film shows a few artists and Peace Farm activists who are opposed to the plant being in existence. It also shows the Pantex PR spokesperson who happens to be a city councilman and his pro Pantex views. The main argument for the plant is the jobs it creates and the economic impact. However, one of the artists in the film points out that the Nazi concentration camps also created a lot of jobs during WWII. The film won several awards including best documentary at the 1996 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. The film is currently out of print, but copies are available on various sites like Amazon and eBay.

See also

• National Nuclear Security Administration
• CEA/Valduc
• Kansas City Plant

External links

• "Pantex Plant". http://www.pantex.com/. Retrieved March 14, 2006. 
• "Pantex Plant Operations". BWX Technologies, Inc.. http://www.bwxt.com/operations/pantex.html. Retrieved March 14, 2006. 
• "Dismantling the Bomb, Or What I Did On My Summer Vacation". http://www.mmmfiles.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=29. Retrieved July 29, 2007. 
• Annotated bibliography for Pantex from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Pantex links at Nuclearpathways.org