Controversy
In the early 1980s, local Bishop Leroy Matthiesen tried persuading Catholic workers at the plant to leave their jobs, offering financial support to those who would do so. In 1986 activists purchased 20 acres (81,000 m2) adjacent to the facility to create "The Peace Farm", described as "a visible witness against weapons of mass destruction".
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.
Read more about this topic: Pantex Plant
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)