Type B Accident Investigation of the August 5, 2003, Pu-238 Multiple Uptake Event, Plutonium Facility, Los Alamos

Plutonium-238 is the isotope that powers spacecraft, and it emits alpha particles. Skin stops those, so the danger lies in material that gets inside a person, which is what the title means by an uptake event. On August 5, 2003, in a storage room at the Plutonium Facility, a release of the material put radiation doses on two workers.

The Department of Energy classes accidents of this size for a Type B investigation, and this is the report that investigation produced for the National Nuclear Security Administration. Its table of contents runs from a prologue and executive summary through the facility description, a section on the organization of the Nuclear Materials Technology Division, and the scope and methodology of the inquiry, before it reaches discussion.

The report is 94 pages. A reader who wants the sequence of what happened will find it after the background material, not before it.