Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/1/2015
CARLSBAD, N.M.—In an effort to increase Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board oversight following the 2014 incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Board approved a proposal here this week that would increase DNFSB staff reviews at several Department of Energy sites. The Board does not have on-site representatives at sites including WIPP, Idaho, the Nevada National Security Site, and the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, but this week backed a plan to produce monthly written reports from those sites and quarterly onsite reviews. The events at WIPP highlighted the need to increase the DNFSB’s effectiveness at sites without a permanent representative, Board Member Sean Sullivan told WC Monitor at the meeting. “The bottom line is, we exist as an agency to advise the [DOE] Secretary so that he doesn’t have nuclear accidents, and they had a nuclear accident,” he said. “We need to make sure that in addition to insisting that the Department of Energy does better, we owe it to the taxpayer to insist that we do all that we can.”
This week’s public DNFSB hearing is only the second public hearing that the Board has held in recent years, and comes in response to increased Board attention at WIPP since the February 2014 salt truck fire and radiological release at WIPP. At the hearing, DNFSB staff highlighted the Board’s work at WIPP. Since 2010, the DNFSB noted several issues at WIPP that later were found to have contributed to the 2014 events, sending letters to DOE on concerns with integrated safety management, the fire hazard analysis and the WIPP maintenance program. However, the DNFSB also had placed a lower priority on WIPP when compared to other sites. “The absence of a site representative at WIPP diminished our ability to observe WIPP operations closely and to detect negative trends that could result in unsafe conditions. Expectations for additional oversight at DOE sites without a site representative were not clearly established,” Carter Shuffler of the Board staff said.
DNFSB Developed Board Corrective Action Plan
DNFSB staff have developed a corrective action plan for the Board that includes risk ranking the documented safety analyses at the sites without DNFSB representatives, along with a monthly written reports from those sites and two weeks of programmatic onsite reviews from each site each quarter. Board staff have also developed a work plan for WIPP for the rest of the fiscal year that includes reviews of WIPP’s development of revised safety related documents, the evaluation of nuclear safety systems and the evaluation of safety management programs.
Acting DNFSB Chair Jessie Roberson emphasized that the Board should also ensure that its oversight continues at other sites during the focus on WIPP. “I think we do have to be careful not to take all of our assets and run to one place when there are so many eyes watching, but we have to make sure that the activities we do undertake are really going to be the ones that count as it relates to our function and mission for assuring nuclear safety,” she said.
The findings of the additional DNFSB reviews should be applied across the complex, Board Member Daniel Santos said. “I’m very interested to get an understanding and see how the staff will leverage all of their findings to the other sites as they go through their own reviews. You are going to find best practices, issues and making sure that it is disseminated throughout the entire board staff is very important,” he said.
‘EM Has to Look in the Mirror’
During the hearing, DOE and officials from WIPP managing contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership emphasized that they are implementing corrective actions as a result of the WIPP events, including responding to the judgements of need in the recent DOE Accident Investigation Board reports. Roberson stressed the oversight responsibility of EM headquarters. “EM also has to look in the mirror at itself as well. What is EM headquarters doing to ensure a better safety culture at WIPP?” she asked, adding. “I think headquarters has a tremendous role to play here. I understand you say you have increased staffing in your safety oversight organization, but are there other principles and expectations that would improve the oversight from headquarters as well to ensure there is a good safety culture surrounding the site?”
Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Mark Whitney said that DOE has taken several steps to improve oversight, in addition to hiring more staff at both headquarters and the Carlsbad Field Office. “We have set out on a course to strengthen our oversight through many different mechanisms. … This is not just a WIPP issue, this is something that we do need to apply across the complex,” Whitney said.
Safety culture within the workforce is also something that DOE and the contractor are working to improve. “There is a perception within the workforce that we have prioritized production over safety, specifically on the way to recovery,” Whitney said. “That is an unintended consequence of trying to resume operations. But I think a point that we missed and haven’t been as clear on as we should have been, because it is our strategy and focus, is that resuming operations at WIPP first and foremost involve establishing a safety envelope to resume operations. That’s our first priority. So when we talk about resuming WIPP operations and recovery operations, we should be explicit that that’s what we should talk about.”
DOE will require completion of all corrective actions before waste operations resume in the WIPP underground, though some involving long-term assessments will continue after the start of operations, DOE EM Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Safety, Security and Quality Programs Jim Hutton said. The DNFSB plans to follow up on those corrective actions and continue tracking the issue. “The question of course is two or three years down the line, how much of it remains,” Sullivan said, adding, “Once the waste operations actually begin, will those [corrective actions] get appropriately be tracked? I think we need to consider coming back in two years to look at, now that all of the dust has settled from the incidents and waste operations have begun again and are in full swing … we should consider coming back and looking at the overall state of affairs at WIPP and making sure that the fixes that were made were in fact permanent.”
