The Energy Department has questioned the way Fluor Idaho followed up on a summer 2018 glove box accident in which a worker suffered a puncture wound at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP).
The DOE Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) said the company’s root cause analysis found “management failed to recognize the significance of the hazards” posed by the supercompactor cleanout work done using glove boxes.
“The impact of potential nuclear safety culture issues is not adequately addressed” in the issues management system Fluor uses to ensure problems are fully fixed and don’t reoccur, the DOE office said in its report Tuesday.
Glove boxes are sealed containers used to handle radioactive or hazardous substances. The accident happened during a routine cleaning of the glove box to eliminate the risk of a nuclear criticality.
Fluor Idaho issued a “stop work” order after the June 5, 2018, incident in which an unidentified object penetrated the worker’s protective equipment while the individual reached across the glove box tray. Once the order was lifted three weeks later, the company required thicker gloves, better protective equipment, and training to prevent reoccurence.
The Fluor Idaho issues management system did not initially list nuclear safety culture as a root or contributing cause to the incident, EA said. The DOE office’s review focuses on work during fiscal 2018 at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex – especially the AMWTP and the Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP).
The Idaho Cleanup Project contractor has since developed training to improve its cause analysis and corrective action process, although Fluor has not shown that the training has been carried out, EA said.
“Fluor Idaho disagrees with the report’s assertion that its corrective actions following the June 5 glovebox puncture incident at AMWTP focused on just the Supercompactor glovebox and not more broadly on other glovebox work at AMWTP and the Accelerated Retrieval Project,” company spokesman Erik Simpson said in a Friday email.
A Fluor Idaho analysis team made recommendations on procedural improvements, equipment upgrades, additional employee safety equipment, and increased management supervision. “All personnel who work in gloveboxes regardless of the facility were also trained to the new procedures and requirements,” Simpson said. A special review, including outside experts, also found the company had a good safety culture, he added.
More broadly, DOE identified as a deficiency Fluor Idaho’s failure to carry out several quarterly safety and health inspections at AMWTP due to scheduling errors. The inspection of the entire facility did not occur each quarter as required, the DOE office said.
In another deficiency, some of Fluor Idaho’s safety management plan self-assessments “are not sufficiently self-critical,” the report said. Fluor had identified 25 safety-related issues including “a drum exothermic event” – an apparent reference to an April incident in which four drums of radioactive waste sludge overheated and blew off their lids at INL’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex.
“Despite the number and severity of these events,” Fluor Idaho generally concluded they were “project-isolated issues,” EA said.
The Energy Department requires primes to monitor and evaluate all work done under their contracts, including the work of subcontractors.
In addition to reviewing numerous Fluor Idaho reports and other documents, the DOE office conducted a 10-day site visit to the Idaho Cleanup Project in August 2018.
Fluor Idaho believes it has now addressed all issues identified by the EA report, Simpson said.
Opened in 2003 to implement a 1995 settlement agreement between DOE, the state, and the U.S. Navy over nuclear waste storage in Idaho, the AMWTP has been earmarked for closure. The Energy Department said Dec. 5 it plans to close the plant in mid-to-late 2019 after it finishes treating and shipping about 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Fluor’s five-year, $1.5 billion Idaho Cleanup Project Contract runs through May 2021.
