The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted its informational memorandum on open emergency management deficiencies at defense nuclear facilities as part of the DOE’s implementation of its complex-wide emergency preparedness and response improvement program.
The department has been developing its implementation plan since the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) recommended in 2014 that the department create a complex-wide framework by the end of 2016.
A July 14 letter from Deborah Wilber, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Emergency Operations, to DNFSB Chair Joyce Connery transmitted the document, which lists deficiencies that were reported by defense nuclear facilities between October 2015 and February 2016. In some cases the issue had been resolved or there was no deficiency to begin with; others are ongoing, with the report listing a planned closure date.
The report lists dozens of findings spread across the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia National Laboratories, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the Nevada National Security Site; the Hanford Site in Washington state; the Idaho National Laboratory; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; the Pantex Plant in Texas; the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee; and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Only the Idaho and Lawrence Livermore labs were found to have no open deficiences, while WIPP had completed all of its corrections.
At the Nevada National Security Site, the document says deteriorating radio communications system equipment may lead to “program support system failures” and that a contract has been awarded to replace the system. Installation of the new system is “on-track for 2016,” it said, with a planned closure date at the end of September 2017.
At Pantex, the document says a new methodology for evacuating uncleared personnel needs to be developed, based on an issue in which security personnel instructed uncleared people to stay in a building when employees were otherwise trying to evacuate. The planned closure date for this corrective action is next January.
The Sandia National Laboratories had several open issues, the corrective actions for which largely involved updating documents and training procedures for emergency management exercise objectives. Several issues had been closed.
