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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

3 Suspended For Coverup At Reactor

Associated Press

Sandia National Laboratories has suspended work at its nuclear research center and demoted three supervisors who tried to cover up that a reactor automatically shut down because it was running too high.

“It took a while for all this to fall into place and to find out what happened,” spokeswoman Kathy Kuhlmann said Wednesday when asked to account for the delay.

There was no release of radiation in the Dec. 7 shutdown, which happened during a test of the reactor, officials said. But management didn’t find out about the problem until 10 days later.

Three reactor supervisors were suspended without pay for a week and reassigned for violating operating procedures and failing to report the problem.

The supervisors, whose names were withheld, threw away records indicating the shutdown had occurred and didn’t record the surge in written logs, officials said.

“There was clearly an intent to not report this incident and to throw away the papers indicating it happened,” said Paul Pickard, a deputy director at Sandia.

Operations at three other Sandia nuclear research facilities were suspended Friday, officials said.

All four facilities should reopen in two to three weeks pending a review of operation and safety procedures and management structure at the test site, officials said.

The four are in a remote, restricted area south of Albuquerque.

Sandia National Laboratories is a federal defense research laboratory that before the end of the Cold War was responsible for developing delivery systems for nuclear weapons.