During 2023, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board advised the Department of Energy on issues ranging from on-site transportation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to overseeing aging nuclear infrastructure across the weapons complex.
Those are some highlights of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB)’s 34th Annual Report to Congress published March 18.
DOE sent DNFSB a “benchmarking report” for managing decades-old nuclear infrastructure in September. In October and November, the board sent letters to DOE saying the actions “will not be sufficient to drive necessary safety improvements” across the weapons complex.
The latest annual DNFSB report also addresses site-by-site issues.
In March 2023, Triad National Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) prime contractor at Los Alamos, took steps to improve safety following a DNFSB letter.
“These safety measures represent an improvement … however, more work is needed” particularly in regard to moving radioactive material, the DNFSB said. The board made a recommendation in January 2024 to improve onsite transport at Los Alamos.
Also at Los Alamos, DNFSB wants NNSA to improve safety at the Plutonium Facility to support the plant’s “increased mission scope,” DNFSB said in the report. Los Alamos plans to start making 30 weapons grade plutonium pits annually by 2028.
Board members also visited the Savannah River Site in South Carolina in May and were briefed on development of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility that DOE estimates will open in 2035 or so and eventually cast 50 plutonium pits a year.
The facility will be built from the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. Crews at the site have already started removing some unneeded equipment from the building. DNFSB and NNSA are discussing their differences on safety standards for the new pit factory, where the agency will cast the fissile first-stage cores of nuclear weapons, beginning with pits for the W87-1 warhead.
Also in May 2023 DNFSB was briefed on steps taken by DOE since an April 2018 accident where four transuranic waste drums overheated and blew off their lids at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Created by congress in 1988, DNFSB is designed to provide outside safety advice and recommendations on nuclear defense facilities to the secretary of energy.
Set up as a five-person panel, DNFSB fell below quorum in October 2023 with the retirement of Jessie Hill Roberson. The board continues with only two members thanks to a provision in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that allows the chair to temporarily run the agency.