The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week accepted the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) recommendation to improve the safety of nuclear explosives handling at the Pantex weapons service plant in Amarillo, Texas.
Some of these tweaks to operations at the Pantex Plant are complete already, NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty wrote in a letter to Bruce Hamilton, chair of the independent federal nuclear safety watchdog.
The DNFSB posted Gordon-Hagerty’s letter online Friday, three days after the April 16 date printed below the NNSA chief’s official letterhead.
“I accept Recommendation 2019-1, which aligns with improvement actions that the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has already taken,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote. “We look forward to briefing the Board on improvement actions planned and underway.”
A DNFSB spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment Monday about whether the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety agency had yet scheduled any briefing with the NNSA.
Recommendation 2019-1, published in late February and based on board fact-finding conducted between November 2017 and March 2018, is the first recommendation the DNFSB has issued in the Donald Trump administration. The recommendation called out a few scenarios that, while unlikely, could spread dangerous levels of radiation beyond Pantex’s boundaries.
Among other hazards identified by the DNFSB: cracks in a tool used to lift high explosives out of W76 warheads; procedures that may expose the W87’s warhead’s arming system to jostling during disassembly; the potential for a worker to crush parts of the B61 by tripping and falling on a certain piece of equipment; and even the potential that a W78 warhead could be struck by lightning while moving from one location to another within Pantex.
Among the improvements the NNSA made since the DNFSB’s fact-finding mission to Pantex is a change to the site’s safety guidelines that address “falling man” scenarios of the sort the board said exist for the B61 bomb.
The DNFSB does not regulate DOE or the NNSA, which regulate themselves at current and former nuclear-weapon sites, but it can make official safety recommendations with which the agencies must publicly agree or disagree.
