Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ (SRNS) safety pause on all nonessential work last fall had “direct financial and schedule impacts on National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) programs,” the agency said last week in its fiscal 2015 performance evaluation report on the contractor. In November, the NNSA reported that it was awarding SRNS, management and operations contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, $13.7 million out of a possible $18.5 million, or 74 percent of its at-risk award fee, for its work in the last federal budget year. Though the NNSA did not directly link the award fee amount to the safety pause, the agency did reference pause-related areas where the contractor fell short.
The full performance report, dated Nov. 19 but released on May 13, re-emphasizes the impact of the safety pause, which spanned from Sept. 11 to Nov. 23. Though the contractor and the Department of Energy have emphasized the financial burden of the pause, neither have come forward with an estimate for how much it cost. DOE official Pat McGuire said in January that the pause was “costing money by not completing the work in a timely manner.”
As with the NNSA’s other site M&O contractors, SRNS was rated in several operational areas. The agency scored the contractor as “Excellent” for managing the site’s nuclear weapons mission; “Very Good” for science, technology, and engineering and for leadership; “Good” for operations and infrastructure; and “Satisfactory” for reducing global nuclear security threats. The final segment, meeting Department of Energy and Strategy Partnership Project mission objectives, was deemed not to apply to SRNS.
The bulk of the critiques regarding the safety pause fell under the security threats evaluation.
SRNS self-induced a pause on all nonessential operations after four workers, on Sept. 3, intentionally and improperly stored a plutonium sample in a container that was not suited for transport. The incident, which occurred at the site’s HB Line facility, was one of multiple safety lapses under the scope of SRNS that occurred in the months leading up to the pause, according to an explanation provided in September by company President and CEO Carol Johnson.
The performance evaluation report was released last week but is dated Nov 19. It covers the period from Oct. 1, 2014, to Sept. 30, 2015. The NNSA reported in the document that HB Line, the SRS facility that feeds nuclear materials to H Canyon for processing, failed to achieve consistent plutonium oxide production operations as planned due to the pause. “SRNS leadership took action not only in HB-Line but also implemented a SRS-wide pause based on other indicators across the site. SRNS leadership is taking a comprehensive, methodical approach to address the incident and to resume operations, “the NNSA stated in the report.
In addition to the HB Line plutonium incident, other troubling events under SRNS’ watch included a Jan. 7 event in which all of the agitators at HB Line went down and remained unnoticed for a month following a loss of power. The agitators help workers determine accurate plutonium concentration readings when measuring levels. The lack of agitation could have resulted in improper readings. As a result, the NNSA stated in the evaluation that SRNS must improve its ability to forecast and respond to HB Line anomalies.
Since the Nov. 19 date on the evaluation, SRNS periodically moved facilities out of the safety pause into deliberate operations, a slowed phase of work during which employees pay extra attention to detail. SRNS ended the pause on Nov 23 and fully exited deliberate operations on April 11 of this year by officially moving all facilities into enhanced operations. Enhanced operations are closer to normal operations, but contingencies have been put in place using a sustainment plan for safe operations moving forward. The plan includes periodic half-day pauses and small group discussions to evaluate safety practices.
While pointing out the negative impacts of the pause, the NNSA also commended SRNS for taking the action. The agency wrote that SRNS management exhibited good leadership by instituting the pause, and added that the decision provided an opportunity to “re-evaluate the operational culture and disciplined operations progress.”
Other issues the NNSA noted included previous delays in construction of the Waste Solidification Building (WSB), which will treat approximately 150,000 gallons of transuranic waste and approximately 600,000 gallons of low-level radioactive waste generated from mixed-oxide fuel project operations at Savannah River. Construction of the WSB began in 2008 and was expected to be finished by 2012, with the site operating by 2013. “SRNS continued to spend a large amount of time in the design phase of minor construction and project activities with little field and construction activities being performed. This was due to not having a pipeline of designs completed and ready for execution at the start of the fiscal year,” the NNSA said.
Angie French, an SRNS-NNSA spokeswoman, said the contractor addressed the schedule concerns and was able to complete construction of the facility near the end of last fiscal year. “The facility is now in layup until needed,” she said. But whether it will be needed is still a question mark since the Obama administration is attempting to terminate the MOX project.
The project would use the yet-to-be-completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS to convert weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. But after an initial life-cycle cost estimate of $17 billion for the project, the Energy Department now believes it will cost $51 billion – the main reason why the agency wants to shutter MOX and move forward with a method known as downblending. Rather than recycling the plutonium, downblending would dilute it at SRS and store the final solution at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
French said SRNS listens closely to the feedback from NNSA, adding that “there are always opportunities for improvement. Our practice is to identify those opportunities, develop action plans to address them, then act on those plans.”
SRNS is a consortium consisting of Fluor, Newport News Nuclear, and Honeywell. The firm signed its initial contract on Jan. 10, 2008. It earned $8.6 billion through April 21, 2016, which included an extension in 2013. The contractor will eventually earn $9.6 billion through the lifetime of the contract, which is scheduled to expire on July 31, 2018.
