Chemical Spill Temporarily Shuts Down Purification Facility
NS&D Monitor
12/19/2014
Y-12 National Security Complex officials said this week they are still in the recovery and assessment phase following a Dec. 15 chemical spill at the plant’s Purification Facility. The facility’s only acknowledged mission is production of Fogbank, a classified material used in some thermonuclear weapons, including the W76 warhead. The National Nuclear Security Administration and Consolidated Nuclear Security, the government’s managing contractor at Y-12, said the spill of acetonitrile—a flammable and toxic solvent—was only about a gallon and the chemical had dissipated by the time firefighters entered the building for a second time to assess conditions.
There were reportedly no injured workers or releases to the environment, but the sensitivity of the work done at the Purification Facility and the potential hazards there drew extra attention to the spill. Only about 10 people work in the Purification Facility and they evacuated the building when alarms sounded. According to Andy Huff, a manager with CNS, workers managed to turn off process lines as “they ran from the building.” That may have prevented the spill from being considerably larger.
Investigators Working to Determine Root Cause
CNS President Jim Haynes on Dec. 18 praised the worker response to the spill, and he said he expected the Purification Facility to resume operations within days. “I think we’re talking about days, not weeks or months or something like that,” he said. Asked about a report that a maintenance activity had been performed at the Purification Facility shortly before operations resumed and the leak was discovered, Haynes said there were some maintenance activities it had not been determined if they were in the area where the leak occurred or if that played a role.
Investigators are trying to determine the root cause, he said. “I can tell you it was a pretty amazing response to this,” Haynes said. Making a reference to a report that the workers may have performed heroically, the CNS chief said, “I consider all of our employees to be heroes, especially when they do something right in a moment when you have to react quickly to something. But the team responded brilliantly. … It was really well managed and, fortunately, no one was hurt and nothing in particular was damaged. But we need to get to the root cause of what caused it.”
Federal spokesman Steven Wyatt said the chemical spill was contained in one area of the Purification Facility. He declined to say if the spill was related to the mission that produces Fogbank. Wyatt said the “emergency response” to the chemical spill was officially terminated at 9:45 p.m. Dec. 16. “The investigation into the cause of the spill is still ongoing,” he said. Workers in some nearby buildings were directed to shelter in place during the emergency situation, Wyatt said.
9212 Emissions Contaminate Facility Rooftop, Other Areas
NS&D Monitor
12/19/2014
Emissions from the 9212 uranium complex at the Y-12 National Security Complex have contaminated the rooftop of the facility and nearby areas, according to a Nov. 7 report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Steven Wyatt confirmed that a brownish substance on the roof was uranium, but further details were not released.
In late October, a team from Consolidated Nuclear Security—the contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant—noticed abnormal brown stains on the exterior of ventilation stacks at the plant’s 9212 uranium-processing complex. The stains were reportedly from stacks tied to a ventilation system for operations that dissolve uranium metal for processing.
2,800 Square Feet of Roof Contaminated
The Y-12 system is reportedly set up to help protect workers by capturing contaminated vapors released when the “tray dissolver units” are opened during operations. In this case, however, the emissions from the uranium operations may have gone through a stack without scrubbers or high-efficiency air filters.The work crew from the Y-12 contractor was “changing out filter paper in the stack monitors for exhaust stacks 47 and 114 when they noted abnormal stains on the exterior of stack 114,” the DNFSB report said. “It appeared that a brownish substance had been ejected from stack 47 onto stack 114 and the surrounding roof,” the report said.
A follow-up investigation revealed that about 2,800 square feet of the roof had low levels of radioactive contamination, and the same type of contamination was also found on “ground-level areas.” Consolidated Nuclear Security set up radiological “boundaries,” apparently to warn workers of the contamination, and samples were sent to a lab for analysis and to pinpoint the source.
Wyatt said the Y-12 contractor has completed its investigation of the situation and sent a “corrective action plan.” But that plan was not immediately available for public release. “Operations of the tray dissolver system remain suspended until actions are completed to return the system to normal operation,” Wyatt said Dec. 18. “There is no indication of any employee exposures as a result of this incident.” The federal spokesman said decontamination efforts by CNS had “significantly” reduced the size of the contaminated area of roof. “Other areas containing low levels of contamination are being controlled in accordance with all requirements for employee and environmental safety.”
ORNL Workers Exposed During Secret Work for Y-12
NS&D Monitor
12/19/2014
A secret project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory gained public attention this week when the lab confirmed that at least eight workers received internal radiation exposures while doing the unspecified work for the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. The incident occurred on Aug. 25 at ORNL’s Building 3525, according to Deputy Director Jeff Smith, who said radioactive material unexpectedly became airborne. He said he couldn’t discuss details of the project because it is classified, or explain what kind of operation caused the radioactive particles to become airborne.
Building 3525 is an older facility at ORNL that contains a number of hot cells for remote operations with radioactive materials, but the Aug. 25 project was not done in a hot cell or a glovebox, Smith said. It apparently was not considered necessary for the activity. Workers who inhaled radioactive particles were monitored for a significant, but unspecified, period following the incident, using bioassay methods to calculate the internal exposures. The highest dose was reported to be 230 millirems.
Radiation Doses Characterized as ‘Minor’
Smith characterized the radiation doses as “minor” and said they were well below the level—500 millirems—that requires the lab to report the incident to the Department of Energy. The lab did, however, report the “unplanned radiological uptake” to DOE and kept the federal agency apprised of the results. The incident also was studied to prevent a recurrence. “We never want to have an unplanned radiological exposure,” Smith said. “We treat them all seriously.”
All told, there were 11 people present during the operation—eight ORNL workers and three observers from Y-12, he said. Smith indicated that all of the individuals received detectable doses of radiation, but Y-12 provided some seemingly conflicting information. According to Y-12 spokeswoman Ellen Boatner, nasal smears and bioassays for the three observers from Y-12 did not indicate any uptake of radioactive material. “They were observing (the operation at Building 3525) from outside the radiological area,” Boatner said. “They had the advantage of some distance and possibly some shielding.”
Workers No Longer Being Monitored
Smith confirmed that the radioactive material associated with the exposures was uranium, but he would not discuss what isotopes of uranium were involved or what other materials were involved in the operations. “I’ll just tell you it had uranium in it,” he said. Smith said it’s not that uncommon for ORNL to be doing work for Y-12. “We have done work for Y-12 for a long time,” Smith said. “They tend to access us for all sorts of support. We try to be helpful when we can.”
The workers were wearing protective gear that was considered appropriate for the project, but Smith said things didn’t go as planned. He said workers realized there was airborne radioactivity when alarms sounded, and they evacuated the area, Smith said. After that, proper procedures were followed to determine the workers’ exposures. They are no longer being monitored, he said.
