BWX Technologies and the Virginia Department of Labor and Health are still investigating the circumstances that led to the death of an employee in a sudden and brief fire two weeks ago at the company’s Lynchburg, Va., plant.
“The flash fire occurred in an isolated area of the facility and no other personnel were injured,” a BWXT spokesperson wrote in an email. “This incident did not involve any release of radioactive material and there was no risk to the public or the environment.”
BWX Technologies self-reported the fatal event to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on June 19, according to a notice the federal agency published on Monday. The sudden fire in the Lynchburg facility, which among other things is licensed to fabricate highly enriched uranium fuel, flared up at about 10:15 a.m. that day, the company spokesperson said.
The flames in the facility’s Supercompactor Room burned out before an emergency response team arrived on the scene, according to the company’s report to the NRC. The worker was found on the floor, and was pronounced dead at the scene by an emergency team paramedic. In the report, BWX Technologies said “[t]here was no release of radioactive material above 1 DAC [Derived-Air-Concentration]” in the area after the accident.
The cause of the incident, along with the exact cause of the worker’s cause of death, remained under investigation at deadline Thursday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The BWX Technologies spokesperson would not confirm the deceased employee’s identity.
A resident NRC inspector at the Lynchburg site visited the scene of the incident as soon as allowed by officials with the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), a commission spokesperson said this week. The resident inspector reviewed “the radiological survey results taken immediately after the event.”
The commission continues “to evaluate the circumstances of the accident for any NRC-licensed implications, but there were no radiological materials involved and no NRC reactive inspection was required,” the spokesperson for the federal regulator said.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Labor, OSHA’s parent agency, said the agency has six months to wrap up its investigation of the fatal incident in Lynchburg.
The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office continues to assist OSHA with its investigation, but is not conducting a criminal investigation, an investigator with the department told NS&D Monitor on Wednesday.
OSHA has investigated BWX Technologies before, federal records show, but none of those incidents involved fire.
BWXT, together with its Nuclear Fuel Services subsidiary in Erwin, Tenn., produces uranium fuel for the U.S. Navy, and for research and other reactors in the U.S. The company also down-blends highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium to fuel a civilian reactor that produces tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. The Lynchburg facility’s NRC fuel-fabriction license expires in March 2027.
