Rep. Pearce Has ‘Deep Concerns’ With Breidenbach’s Link to 2011 Incident
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
4/17/2015
The choice of Idaho National Laboratory’s Phil Breidenbach as the next head of Nuclear Waste Partnership , the managing contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, is being met with questions this week given his link to a previous contamination incident. Breidenbach was picked this week to replace NWP President Bob McQuinn, who was brought on after the February 2014 WIPP radiological release, an event that contaminated workers and shut down a major DOE program. With 30 years of nuclear experience at Idaho and the Savannah River Site, Breidenbach also “served a key role” in developing NWP’s recovery plan following the WIPP release, according to NWP. He has most recently served as INL’s Director of Nuclear Operations at the Materials and Fuels Complex. Notably, in that post he managed work at the Zero Power Physics Reactor at the time of a November 2011 incident that exposed 16 workers to plutonium, including two who suffered internal contamination.
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), whose district includes WIPP, says he is verifying Breidenbach’s role in the incident, which Pearce says was not mentioned in a briefing with contractor officials. “If true, I have deep concerns about his suitability to take over the project,” Pearce told WC Monitor. “I feel like they should have brought that up. I have a couple of questions going forward. It doesn’t change our support for the project or anything, just it was sort of a bumbling way to handle it and for us to find out after the fact was not productive.”
Putting someone linked to the Idaho event in a “sensitive position” is also a concern, Pearce said. “What are we going to say to the people in the town?” he asked. “We’re bringing somebody in here with a pretty big problem in the background.”
Breidenbach had been in his role at INL for just a few months when the event at the Zero Power Physics Reactor occurred. The incident resulted in more than $400,000 in fines for lab contractor Battelle Energy Alliance after a Department of Energy accident investigation report deemed the event “preventable.” The report found that “over time, a number of opportunities had been missed that could have prevented the accident,” including oversight by BEA management.
Breidenbach Credited for Role in INL Recovery
However, DOE Idaho Operations Office Manager Richard Provencher has credited Breidenbach for his role in the recovery from the contamination event, stating that he contributed to improved performance there. The facility “had a poor and entrenched culture, and was hard to manage,” Provencher said in a September 2014 professional reference letter for Breidenbach obtained by WC Monitor. He added: “Phil was responsible for investigating the event, developing corrective actions and leading significant change. In his dealings with DOE, Phil was able to describe that his approach would be similar to what he did with spent fuel management to transform the fundamental programs, retrain everyone, set clear expectations, and transform the culture at the [Materials and Fuels Complex].”
AECOM: ‘Breidenbach Will Do an Outstanding Job’
Breidenbach will come to WIPP on April 21 “to ensure a smooth transition,” according to an NWP release. McQuinn, who was brought in to lead the contractor shortly after the 2014 WIPP incidents, will return to an executive post in AECOM’s Management Services Business Group in Aiken, S.C. “upon completion of the successful closure of WIPP’s Panel 6 and Panel 7, Room 7,” according to NWP. “Bob has done a tremendous job leading the recovery effort at WIPP since he arrived in March 2014,” James Taylor, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Nuclear and Environment for AECOM’s Management Services Group, said in a statement.
Taylor went on to say, “Under Bob’s guidance, the NWP team has made great progress in restoring the safety systems at WIPP. Numerous corrective actions have been completed under Bob’s leadership. He also led the effort to complete first-of-its-kind remote photographic mapping of the accident scene in Room 7, Panel 7, enabling the Accident Investigation Board to complete its accident review. Now that WIPP is on a clear path to recovery, this is a logical time to make a leadership change and Phil Breidenbach will do an outstanding job.”
