@article{ref1,
title="Drum breach: Operational temporalities, error politics and WIPP's kitty litter nuclear waste accident",
journal="Social Studies of Science",
year="2021",
author="Ialenti, Vincent",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="In February 2014 at the WIPP transuranic waste repository in New Mexico, a drum erupted in fire. It exposed 22 people to radiation, shut down the underground  facility for 35 months and cost the United States over a billion dollars. Heat and  pressure had built up in the drum due to chemical reactions with an organic kitty  litter, Swheat Scoop, which had been mistakenly added to it at Los Alamos National  Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. This article disrupts two prominent  narratives: (a) that the accident was induced by a typographical error made after a  waste packaging operations supervisor misheard 'inorganic kitty litter' as 'an  organic kitty litter' during a meeting, and (b) that it was induced primarily by  'mismanagement' at WIPP, Los Alamos and the DOE's New Mexico field offices. It does  so by exploring how a series of overambitious political initiatives, fraught labor  relationships, financialized subcontracting arrangements and US Department of Energy  (DOE) performance incentives set the stage for Los Alamos's notorious error by  accelerating US waste packaging, shipping and repository emplacement rates beyond  systemic capacity. Attention to operational temporalities shows how an  often-overlooked nexus of schedule pressures, political-economic imperatives and  regulatory breakdowns converged to modulate nuclear waste management workflows and,  ultimately, trigger a radiological accident.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0306-3127",
doi="10.1177/0306312720986609",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312720986609"
}