March 17, 2014

DNFSB OUTLINES CONTINUING SAFETY CONCERNS WITH UPF DESIGN

By ExchangeMonitor

While acknowledging there’s been progress made in incorporating safety into the design of the Uranium Processing Facility, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board said there are still a bunch of open issues to be resolved and it wants the National Nuclear Security Administration to address those concerns—with a report and briefing—within the next two months. DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur outlined the board’s concerns about the safety issues in an Aug. 26 letter to NNSA Acting Administrator Bruce Held, attaching a report from board staff that provides details of design elements that don’t comply with DOE orders and pose a potential risk to workers and the public if not resolved. The safety board’s staff performed a detailed review of progress on the UPF design within the past couple of months, meeting with UPF team members to gauge what’s been done and what’s yet to be accomplished in addressing potential accident scenarios and worst-case conditions that would put extreme stress on the big production center.

Some of the issues pinpointed by the DNFSB in April 2012 have not yet been fully resolved, Winokur said. In his letter to Held, Winokur said the board wants a report and briefing within 60 days to describe the NNSA’s plan for addressing the open issues with the safety basis for UPF and NNSA’s plans to “strengthen oversight of control selection and evaluations processes for the UPF project.” Among the open safety issues is the potential impact of an airplane crash, particularly for the ancillary structures associated with UPF—such as the planned connector between UPF and the adjacent Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. It’s possible that the ancillary structures may, like the UPF building itself, need to be designed for aircraft crash impacts in order to comply with DOE orders, the DNFSB staff noted in their report.

In addition to the dozen or so open safety issues raised in the report, the board staff also indicated some concerns with the atmospheric dispersion models being used to address hazardous fallout in the event of various UPF accident scenarios. In it conclusion, the staff report stated, “Early and effective integration of safety into design is critically important for the success of this multibillion-dollar project that is needed to establish a modern, safe and secure replacement facility for uranium processing and manufacturing capabilities currently housed in aging or unsound Y-12 facilities. … For many of these open issues, the safety analysis has not demonstrated that credited controls are capable of effectively performing their safety functions.”

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