No one was injured and no special nuclear material was damaged after an apparent hydrogen fluoride leak Thursday morning in the 9212 uranium processing building at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration said.
An alarm first detected the gas release at 7:52 a.m. Eastern time in the dock area of Building 9212, the agency spokesperson wrote in a Friday email. The Y-12 site management and operations contractor, Consolidated Nuclear Security, called for evacuation of the entire 9212 complex at 7:57 a.m., the spokesperson said.
The verified Twitter account for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Y-12 site first announced an “incident” at around 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning. At 9:21 a.m., Y-12 tweeted that “Personnel in the affected Y-12 building have been evacuated.”
By about 10:30 a.m. Thursday, the Y-12 Twitter account said “Conditions at Y-12 are safe and stable, and the emergency response has been terminated.”
Hydrogen fluoride is a gas that can cause serious skin burns, blindness, and damage to throat and lung tissue if inhaled. The NNSA did not identify the source of the leak.
The NNSA spokesperson declined to say which program personnel in the 9212 dock area were working on when they first detected the leak. The spokesperson would say only that the building supports “several current missions.”
Among these is manufacture of uranium-fueled secondary stages for the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb the NNSA is refurbishing. The first of these canned subassemblies rolled off the line at Y-12 in December.
The NNSA spokesperson would not say whether the agency or its contractor at Y-12 planned any follow-on medical examinations for personnel in the area potentially affected by the leak.
“The event resulted in no personnel exposure or injuries,” the spokesperson wrote.
