An excavation contractor working on site preparations for the Uranium Processing Facility in late January accidentally demolished a storm drain line on the west side of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee, resulting in some activities at the construction site being put on hold for a month or more, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report and information provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Steven Wyatt, a spokesman at the NNSA’s Production Office, said the site work was being done by Emerald-A&H Joint Venture. Emerald was working under a subcontract to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is supervising site preparations for UPF under a federal interagency agreement with the NNSA.
Wyatt said the contract required Emerald-A&H to absorb the costs for reconnecting the demolished draining pipe. “Therefore, there was no cost to the U.S. government,” he said in an email response to questions.
Details of the damage incurred have not been revealed, but a recently released weekly activities report by DNFSB staff said the destruction of a 36-inch storm drain occurred while the contractor was installing a new 48-inch storm drain line to prepare for construction of the multi-billion-dollar UPF complex. According to Wyatt, the 36-inch storm drain was reconnected on March 18, resolving the issue.
Wyatt said work was suspended “in the immediate area of the initial interference” from Feb. 7 to March 18.
The Corps of Engineers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.
Besides the physical damage, other issues were raised by the event.
According to the DNFSB staff report, the Corps of Engineers informed Consolidated Nuclear Security (the government’s managing contractor at Y-12), the NNSA’s UPF Project Office, and Bechtel National (which is playing a prominent role in developing UPF) of the accident in early February. The safety board’s report said the UPF Project Office has a site representative to ensure that “configuration control” of Y-12 systems is maintained throughout work on the project. However, it took several days for the error to be recognized and several more days for the Corps of Engineers to inform the various parties, according to the DNFSB.
“Work was suspended as efforts commenced to restore construction site drainage,” the report states.
In late February, according to the DNFSB, site personnel noticed that stormwater had infiltrated the area around the 36-inch line and was starting to undermine the newly installed piping and “posed a threat to the surrounding infrastructure.” The Y-12 M&O contractor called a meeting of its Operational Safety Board to authorize emergency work “to allow expedited modifications to the storm drain and stabilize the construction site in advance of pending storms.”
The board also asked that a civil engineer from Y-12 be tasked to evaluate the proposed changes to the drain as a condition before the modifications could be approved. However, because of a “miscommunication,” the emergency work was started hours before the approval came.
CNS has reportedly held “fact-finding meetings” to document what took place at the UPF site and to make recommendations for correcting them. Among the priorities is to improve communications when “unexpected conditions” occur. That is apparently a point of emphasis because of the multiple parties involved in the big project and sharing responsibilities at the Oak Ridge site.
