The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is concerned that an earthquake could cause high explosives to detonate in the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility and spew plutonium into the air and beyond the confines of the former nuclear test site.
The independent federal nuclear health and safety watchdog laid out the concern in a March 21 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
“The facility continues to operate without accounting for the increase in seismic hazard and without evaluating whether the credited structures, systems and components can perform their safety function during and after a seismic event,” DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton wrote in the letter.
Some time prior to November 2018, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) shipped about half a metric ton of plutonium to the Device Assembly Facility. Nevada officials and the state’s congressional delegation strongly objected to the shipment. They said they did not know it had already happened when the state sued to stop the shipment.
The NNSA and Nevada site management contractor Mission Support and Test Services could address Hamilton’s concerns in a new documented aafety analysis for the Device Assembly Facility: a document that identifies potential hazards at the facility and which Hamilton expects the agency to finish this summer, according to the letter.
On Monday, Nevada’s congressional delegation seized on the DNFSB letter, and other things, as evidence that Congress should legally bar the NNSA from sending more plutonium to the state.
The NNSA shipped the plutonium to Nevada because a federal court in South Carolina ordered the agency to move 1 metric ton of plutonium out of that state by Jan. 1, 2020. The half-ton of plutonium that did not go to Nevada will be shipped to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, if it has not been already.
The NNSA has said in court that it will ship no more of the 1 ton of plutonium ordered out of South Carolina to Nevada.
