Concerns are growing over safety violations at the Savannah River Site’s defense facilities, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a recent letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
The Jan. 4 letter, signed by DNFSB Chairman Sean Sullivan, said safety issues identified in a Sept. 8, 2017, report from staff at the DOE watchdog agency “could challenge the ability of operations personnel to ensure SRS defense nuclear facilities operate in compliance” with technical safety requirements (TSR).
Technical safety requirements are safety guidelines outlined for each DOE nuclear facility. Weaknesses identified at the Savannah River Site included a “less than adequate” approach to implementing the TSRs, inadequate training of personnel on following safety protocols, and an inability to properly correct mistakes, according to DNFSB staff.
In statements to Weapons Complex Monitor this week, the prime operations and liquid waste management contractors at the DOE facility in South Carolina said they are taking steps to address the issues raised by the DNFSB.
The 310-square-mile site near Aiken, S.C., conducts various missions for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). These missions include liquid waste treatment, cleaning and closing of waste storage tanks, nuclear materials processing, and tritium production for the U.S. Department of Defense.
During a May 2017 review, DNFSB staff interviewed employees and followed up on previous safety incidents dating to 2016 and early 2017. They toured several SRS facilities, including: K Area, which stores plutonium stockpiles; tank farms, which house untreated liquid waste; the Defense Waste Processing Facility, which converts the waste into a less harmful form for storage; the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL); and the Tritium Extraction Facility, where tritium production takes place.
The board noted several safety issues among the site’s two primary contractors: management and operations provider Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and liquid waste manager Savannah River Remediation (SRR).
DNFSB staff noted a March 2016 incident in which tank-farm personnel transferred waste to a tank that receives the material once it has broken down into simpler parts. At the time of the incident, the receipt tank had an inoperable ventilation system and should not have received the waste.
A Savannah River Remediation investigation determined workers failed to implement multiple conduct of operations (ConOps) barriers that would have prevented the incident. “These barriers included shift routines and operating practices, procedures (both content and compliance), operations control of equipment and system status, and communications among operations personnel,” according to the DNFSB staff report.
In April 2016, the Savannah River National Laboratory failed to implement ConOps when a lift fueled by gasoline was left unattended without a required fire watch. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, which operates the national lab, found that insufficient communication and TSR controls led to the breakdown.
Then, in January 2017, workers at one of the site’s tritium facilities performed a prohibited activity at the gas transfer systems. The activity – which the DNFSB did not identify in the report – was prohibited at the time because the area was in standby mode for a required monthly surveillance test. Miscommunication led the workers to believe the area was in operations mode, which is why they performed the activity.
In addition to these three incidents, the report also noted safety failures from earlier years, and referenced a 2014 letter the board sent to DOE expressing safety concerns at Savannah River.
These incidents are “representative of human performance errors but also represent failures of ConOps processes, procedures, and practices designed to ‘minimize the likelihood and consequences of human fallibility or technical and organizational system failures,’” DNFSB staff said in the September 2017 report.
In the Jan. 4 letter, Sullivan requested DOE within 90 days provide a written response to the concerns outlined in the report, along with a briefing.
In an emailed statement, SRNS spokesperson Barbara Smoak said the contractor began correcting its safety culture following the board’s May 2017 visit to the site. For example, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions provided a corrective action plan to the DOE-SR office that outlines how it will improve the safety culture.
“Immediate and long-term actions in the corrective action plans are already in place to address the performance issues identified and to increase the level of proficiency to maintain a high level of performance in safety bases requirements,” according to Smoak.
In a prepared statement Friday, Savannah River Remediation said implementation of the technical safety requirements corrective action plan is ongoing. “Immediate actions in the CAP addressing TSR execution performance have been completed, including the exit of the Deliberate Operations Plan. Long-term actions in the CAP will continue addressing performance issues identified by SRR and the DOE-SR Operations Office to increase the level of proficiency in order to maintain a high level of performance in safety bases requirements.”
