An advisory board to the Savannah River Site wants more staffers and assessments for site work involving radioactive materials and/or criticality. The request comes in the aftermath of the safety pause on all nonessential work implemented on Sept. 11, 2015, by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the South Carolina site’s management and operations contractor. The pause lasted more than two months, and members of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) received regular updates on the situation and the stages of operations following the suspension of work.
On Tuesday, the board approved a list of recommendations pertaining to work involving radioactive materials. The board asked that the Department of Energy review any resulting paperwork or documentation by an additional supervisory level no later than 24 hours after a work shift, even if that 24-hour period includes a weekend or holiday. “Hire additional personnel or shift responsibilities so that this type of supervision could be carried out,” the CAB stated.
The CAB is seeking additional supervision due to the safety-related incidents that occurred under the scope of the contractor and has also asked that DOE provide additional funding if necessary to make sure the right personnel are put in place to carry out the recommendations. The CAB also wants teams of workers to oversee each other and to change members periodically so that “team member familiarity” doesn’t impact the quality of the work.
The board further wants SRNS to provide a presentation on the results of its effectiveness review – a task the contractor agreed to conduct in April when it signed a consent order covering several items that SRNS must complete in lieu of lieu of being issued an enforcement action that would include a request for a civil penalty. Under the consent order, SRNS paid the federal government $175,000 and agreed to carry out several tasks to improve the safety quality of its nuclear criticality safety program and other safety-related areas and missions.
Those tasks include all of the actions outlined in a corrective action plan that SRNS has already started implementing. The plan includes periodic half-day pauses and small group discussions to evaluate safety practices. In addition, SRNS plans to add 20 positions this year in the areas of procedures, training, quality assurance, and other support organizations.
SRNS is responsible for waste management and the treatment of certain radioactive wastes at SRS, including low-level solid and liquid waste, and transuranic (TRU) waste, which includes clothes, rags and other items that have been contaminated during waste work. SRNS also disposes of some low-level radioactive waste on site. Waste types that are not suitable for SRS disposal, such as TRU waste, are ultimately sent to federal repositories after being temporarily stored on-site.
The Energy Department said it is preparing a response to the CAB recommendation. There is no projection for when a response will be issued.
SRNS self-induced a pause on all nonessential operations after four workers, on Sept. 3, 2015, intentionally and improperly stored a plutonium sample in a container that was not suited for transport. The incident, which occurred at the site’s HB Line facility, was one of multiple safety lapses under the scope of SRNS that occurred in the months leading up to the pause. Other incidents last year included a Jan. 7 event in which the agitators at HB Line, the facility that feeds nuclear materials to H Canyon so they can be processed, went down and remained unnoticed for a month following a loss of power.
Facilities that paused work beginning in September included H Canyon and HB Line; the L Area facility, which stores spent fuel; and the K Area facility that stores other nuclear materials. In late September the impacted facilities began to transition to deliberate operations – a phase after the safety pause during which work was conducted in a reduced state with stronger supervision and attention to detail – and from there into enhanced operations.
All of the facilities are now in enhanced operations, a mode that is essentially normal operations that includes implementation of the action plan. HB Line was the last to exit deliberate operations, entering into enhanced operations on April 11.
