A major waste treatment facility at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site as of this week remained in deliberate operations, more than four months after it was placed into the slowed work mode due to multiple safety-related incidents. Officials at the South Carolina facility did not respond to an inquiry regarding how much longer the situation is expected to last.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) was placed in deliberate operations in June following three technical safety requirement violations and a contamination incident, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) wrote in a June 23 report. The facility converts Cold War-era liquid radioactive waste stored at SRS into a glass form that is safe for interim storage at the site. Eventually, that material will be sent to a permanent federal repository.
The safety issues at the facility included a failure to establish a “specific administrative control” intended to prevent accidents. In short, the SRS liquid waste contractor, Savannah River Remediation (SRR), suffered a lapse in communication while transferring waste. The lapse caused the contractor to transfer the waste before ceasing work that could have compromised the process, according to a May 26 DNFSB report.
Then, in a June 9 report, the board reported that two workers with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the site’s management and operations contractor, were contaminated by radioactively contaminated oil near DWPF while taking samples of the material. The workers were not seriously harmed.
These and other incidents led the site to place DWPF in deliberate operations, a reduced work phase in which personnel pay extra attention to detail and planning when conducting operations. That includes putting waste transfers on hold.
A spokesperson said the Energy Department has taken a number of steps to address the safety issues, including establishing an oversight commmittee of SRS officials and improving training on the site’s safety basis. Additional measures are planned.
