The interlocking mechanism on a freight elevator door at Los Alamos National Laboratory's main plutonium facility is faulty, according to a weekly report from the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board.
The building, known as PF-4, was built in the 1970s and is an example of aging infrastructure throughout the nation's nuclear complex, according to the safety board.
The elevator's problems are common to elderly commercial freight elevators: "sensors stop functioning, doors jam, etc.," Kyle Johnson, chief of staff for the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, wrote in an email to The New Mexican . "There is nothing specialized about this elevator due to its presence in a nuclear facility."
Johnson wrote operations at PF-4 should be able to continue using alternatives. Although the elev