FedEx Plutonium Cargo Broke Rules
An Army depot in California shipped plutonium by air via Federal Express in violation of federal rules, the Energy Department says.
Less than a pound of the highly radioactive element used in nuclear weapons arrived Nov. 7 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for disposal, the department said.
The Army confirmed Wednesday that it had shipped the plutonium by air Nov. 4 “because of a human error in marking the shipping instructions for the carrier.” The Army said it had notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The lab routinely receives plutonium from universities, companies and the government. Lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said this container was marked as plutonium and Federal Express should have shipped it only by truck.
“Federal Express does ship nuclear materials and they have hazardous materials experts who do know what to do in these cases,” he said. “In this case they didn’t do it right.”
The delivery from Sacramento Army Depot arrived with radiation shielding and exposure to workers would have been negligible.
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