Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
12/4/2015
There have been "significant issues" with the safety basis for the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) in Idaho, leading to “underestimating the likelihood and consequences” of some accident scenarios, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. This may have brought about inadequacies in the selection and classification of employee and public safety controls, DNFSB Chairwoman Joyce Connery wrote in a Nov. 23 letter to Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Monica Regalbuto.
Among the issues DNFSB staff members identified in a recent review of AMWTP is that the accident analysis within the facility’s documented safety analysis (DSA) factored in too few gallons of fossil fuel in evaluating the consequences of a significant fossil fuel fire in the Idaho National Laboratory’s transuranic waste storage facilities. The DSA accident analysis assumes 40 gallons of fossil fuel, instead of the 200 gallons allowed in the TRU Storage Area (TSA) Retrieval Enclosure and other TRU storage buildings, according to the DNFSB report.
The board also found that while the south side of AMWTP houses a 45,000-gallon propane storage tank, the north side contains a 30,000-gallon tank, and the complex possesses a 12,000-gallon propane delivery (refueling) truck, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management and/or AMWTP contractor Idaho Treatment Group have not developed any “credited” safety structures, systems, and components, or specific administrative controls, for accidents involving any of the three structures.
“We understand that the DOE Idaho Operations Office is undertaking actions to resolve our concerns,” the letter states. “The Board’s staff will continue to monitor these efforts to improve the safety basis development, approval, and implementation processes at AMWTP and other defense nuclear facilities at INL.”
An EM spokesperson said the Idaho Field Office and ITG acted quickly to respond to the IG’s findings. "DOE-ID and the AMWTP contractor immediately took the appropriate actions and have submitted the necessary changes to the AMWTP Safety Basis documents to resolve the concerns identified earlier by the DNFSB staff’s review that were included in this letter,” the spokesperson wrote in an email last week. “The comments contained in the Board’s staff review will be used to further improve the safety basis development and implementation at the Idaho site."
