Author: Kiersten Sundell
How did cat litter cause a 500-million-dollar nuclear waste disaster? Let’s dive right in.
Back in February 2014, a drum of nuclear waste burst open inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), a nuclear waste facility that’s a half mile underground in the New Mexico desert. This facility isn’t for waste from the nuclear power industry — it’s mostly used to store radioactive military byproducts, like Cold War-era nuclear weapons, or the materials used to make them.
The U.S. Department of Energy quickly suspended operations and launched an investigation, determining that a single waste drum containing radioactive isotopes of americium, plutonium, and uranium seemingly self-destructed.
The reason? Plant operators ordered the wrong brand of kitty litter.
What?! Why is cat litter being used in a highly engineered federal nuclear waste facility anyway?
Well typical, inorganic kitty litter has one primary ingredient — bentonite clay. If you’re a nuclear aficionado, you probably know that this material is also key in storing waste at Onkalo, the Finnish deep geologic repository. It absorbs moisture like crazy, creating a protective barrier between the radioactive material and any possible moisture. It’s entirely possible to get bentonite clay from an industrial supplier, but cat litter is easy to get and has the same ingredients. So why not?
Well, a typo in a procedural manual led workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory to order organic kitty litter instead of the inorganic variety. Organic kitty litter is made with things like wheat, corn, soy, or wood. Not very absorbent, and also extremely flammable. When combined with nitrate salts and triethanolamine in the drum, workers accidentally built a homemade bomb, all due to an administrative typo.
Thankfully the resulting cat-tastrophe didn’t harm anyone, and radiation didn’t escape into the environment, but it did cost a lot to rectify the situation and get the repository in working condition again. Nonetheless, this could be a good marketing opportunity for organic cat litter!
To watch this full video, visit our TikTok page!
