Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
1/29/2016
The National Nuclear Security Administration said it is working to address Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board questions and concerns about the Electrorefining Project that is supposed to replace some existing uranium recovery processes at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.
However, the Jan. 7 response from NNSA Administrator Frank G. Klotz is largely an update on progress to meet the 60-day deadline for a response to the safety board request from late October and doesn’t resolve all issues associated with the proposed uranium work and how it will meet Y-12 missions.
Klotz noted that DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery had previously expressed concerns that components of the Electrorefining Project had not been evaluated as to whether they will meet safety requirements. He said analyses of the project’s “confinement approach,” fire-protection system, and glove box windows will be completed by the end of April.
“This scheduled completion date is in support of the project’s 30 percent design completion milestone,” the NNSA chief wrote to Connery.
Klotz said the Electrorefining Project at Oak Ridge is developing an analysis of the fire-protection system by “modeling different fire scenarios to determine the worst-case fire condition.” Once those results have been identified, a determination can be made regarding whether the existing sprinkler system in the old building that will house the project provides adequate suppression coverage and will prevent a fire’s spread.
The Electrorefining Project is to be carried out in Building 9998, which is part of the 9215 Complex in the highly concentrated and populated Y-12 production zone.
The driver for much of the proposed work underway at Y-12 is to stretch the lifetime of existing production facilities to allow more time for construction and development of new buildings that are a part of the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility.
“Structural analysis is a portion of the Extended Life Program (ELP) that has been established for both 9215 and 9204-2E (Beta-2E),” Klotz wrote to Connery. “The ELP report for these facilities is scheduled to be completed by the middle of January 2016. A Y-12 briefing to the board on the ELP is planned to occur in February 2016.”
The NNSA did not immediately respond to a request for the structural analysis reports on the life extension of Y-12’s production facilities.
