CNS Community Commitment Plan Coming June 30
NS&D Monitor
5/16/2014
Consolidated Nuclear Security, the incoming contractor at the Y-12 and Pantex nuclear weapons plants, plans to release its Community Commitment Plant on June 30—the day before CNS officially takes full responsibility for managing the two sites. Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan said so far, so good, based on multiple meetings with CNS officials, but added he’s anxious to see the contractor’s community plans. “I’m very impressed with them, as individuals,” Beehan said. “We have talked a lot about community involvement.”
Beehan and other city officials have expressed their hope that the top leaders of the new contractor set an example by living in Oak Ridge, a sentiment that has been expressed for virtually every contractor change in Oak Ridge over the past 20 years. “I know you can’t tell people where to live,” Beehan said. According to the Oak Ridge mayor, it’s encouraging that the CNS officials reached out to the community leaders. “We didn’t have to go knock on their door,” he said.
While Oak Ridge is hopeful that the incoming contractor will be generous with donations to charities and important fund-raising effort, Beehan said there’s a need for more than money. “We hope they will participate in the community,” he said, “not only financially but also manpower in getting involved in things. … We need them on boards, we need them at the Chamber [of Commerce]. How are they going to impact the community? We’re the host community for a very important enterprise in America, and we need to have the leadership.”
Oxide Conversion Problems Continuing at Y-12
NS&D Monitor
5/16/2014
The Y-12 National Security Complex has struggled to keep its uranium processing activities in working order in the post-Cold War period. A safety Stand-Down ordered in late 1994 because of conduct of operations was a lasting blow. After the shutdown of most production activities at Y-12 to emphasize the importance of safety procedures, it was more than a decade before all of the uranium processing work was back up and operating. There have been periodic disruptions in the production flow ever since, but no function has been more up-and-down than the Oxide Conversion Facility.
OCF, a key part of the Y-12 recycling of highly enriched uranium, has been mostly inactive in recent years. Although it’s only supposed to be operated on an as-needed basis, it apparently has fallen well short of hopes and expectations. It hasn’t operated in more than a year and it’s not operating now, even though a recently released staff report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said there was a plan to resume operations in early April. That didn’t happen, and a federal spokesman at Y-12 didn’t comment on the reasons why. “OCF remains out of service at this time,” said Steven Wyatt of the NNSA Production Office.
He confirmed that the facility last operated in the March of 2013. That was reportedly only a brief run and the OCF has been out of operation for the year prior to that as well. The most recently identified issue was a small leak of hydrogen fluoride that occurred when operators were getting ready to install a new HF cylinder for the oxide-conversion system, causing multiple evacuations. It was noted in a DNFSB report dated April 11. There are still issues being studied at Y-12, and the suspect cylinder was reportedly returned to the vendor this week.
DNFSB: Progress Being Made
Oxide conversion has been described as essential part of processes used to recycle the weapons-grade uranium and get it ready for reuse in nuclear warheads or other projects. The process converts uranium from an oxide form to uranium tetrafluoride—known as “green salt”—which then goes through a reduction process to form a purified uranium metal. The NNSA has not been forthcoming about how the shutdown of OCF has impacted the plant’s goals and targets, but there reportedly are other sources of uranium metal that have been used for life extension projects and other requirements. But the absence of OCF means that the recycling of scraps can’t be completed—and there may be a backlog of materials awaiting processing.
A March 28 report by DNFSB staff said, “Enriched Uranium Production personnel continue to progress in their efforts to resume operations at OCF. Last week, craft personnel replaced the value stem assembly that system engineers believe was the source of a leak in the primary confinement barrier of the vaporizer enclosure (where alarms had been detecting hydrogen fluoride). The system subsequently passed a helium leak check and pressure decay test. Operators must now completed a small set of surveillances before OCF can return to operation.”
OCF Issues Create Pinch Point
In a memo a year ago, safety board staff assigned to Y-12 said that other than the problem with OCF, the rest of the uranium recycling system had improved significantly. “As a result, Enriched Uranium Production personnel produced nearly double the quantity of purified UO3 (the feed material for the Oxide Conversion Facility) relative to the quantity produced during the first seven months of the fiscal year combined,” the report stated.
But without the OCF in working order, the production of purified uranium metal apparently gets stalled at that point. Other technologies are in development at Y-12 to potentially replace OCF and some of the wet-chemistry operations that are used to recycle the highly enriched uranium. The recently released Red Team report on alternatives to the Uranium Processing Facility recommended making room at the plant’s Beta-2E facility to conduct uranium recovery operations with electro-refining (ER) and direct electrolytic reduction (DER). ORNL Director Thom Mason, who headed the Red Team evaluation, said it would be ideal if those activities were in place well before the time comes to shut down the 9212 complex (targeted for 2025).
B&W Lays Off 122 American Centrifuge Workers
NS&D Monitor
5/16/2014
The blueprint for how the American Centrifuge Project will be reshaped is not yet finished, but the impacts are already being felt in Oak Ridge. Babcock &Wilcox, one of the companies involved in manufacturing centrifuge machines for the project, confirmed that all 122 B&W employees who earlier this year received WARN notices will be laid off. “We are in the process of demobilizing, which includes out-processing employees,” Aimee Mills, a spokeswoman at B&W headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., said in an email response to questions.
Mills said the layoffs are being carried out in phases, but she said all employees would be paid through May 19. That’s the date that meets the 60-day warning period required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Oak Ridge has been the manufacturing hub for the ACP, with B&W and USES Inc. working as partners on the American Centrifuge Manufacturing LLC and produced the advanced centrifuge machines as needed. USEC previously had a 55 percent stake in ACM (with B&W holding 45 percent) but has now taken 100 percent control. It’s not clear whether the Oak Ridge manufacturing center will continue operations, with USEC now working under a subcontract to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. USEC spokesman Paul Jacobson said the effort “will be significantly smaller if anything at all.” While all of the B&W employees received layoff notices, fewer than 10 USEC employees in Oak Ridge have been laid off so far.
