Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
9/4/2015
A team of contractor personnel determined early last month that the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility (WETF) is “ready to safely operate,” according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) site representative report released this week. Gas processing operations at WETF were paused in 2011 due to gas containment safety system issues. The DNFSB report for Aug. 7 says the contractor assessment team, which consists of contractor personnel and is monitored by National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) personnel, “identified 12 findings, noted ‘dramatic’ improvement in facility operations, and concluded that all 17 review objectives were met,” concluding “that the facility was ready to safely operate, subject to satisfactory closure of all pre-start findings.”
LANL spokesman Kevin Roark confirmed that the latest assessment of the facility responsible for tritium processing operations in support of the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship Program was completed on Aug. 7. “Restart activities for WETF continue as scheduled with a Federal Readiness Assessment as the next step in early [fiscal] 2016,” Roark said by email. A DNFSB site rep report for the week ending July 31 says the contractor readiness assessment team evaluated the facility’s “readiness to commence gas transfer operations in order to maintain facility safety/operability and to disposition legacy nuclear material-at-risk.” The assessment followed one last September that found “facility performance was insufficient to ensure gas transfer and associated operations could be safely and compliantly performed,” according to DNFSB.
The upcoming federal readiness assessment is intended to verify the contractor’s readiness to safely restart operations and the resolution of prestart and prior assessment findings for outstanding issues requiring attention, according to DOE nuclear facility restart guidelines. A DOE official told NS&D Monitor that the federal assessment “follows closely” the contractor assessment and ensures “safety systems, processes, procedures, management controls, engineering controls, safety basis documents, safety analysis documents, training courses … are in place to assure that the facility can operate safely.”
The Aug. 7 site rep report outlined several notable findings that need to be addressed, including “procedural execution issues important to Conduct of Operations compliance,” deferred maintenance issues for wet pipe sprinkler maintenance, and “gaps in the implementation of software quality assurance.” The report notes that the federal readiness assessment is “projected to start Sept. 28, 2015.”
