Continuing its investigation of a fatal fire nearly two years ago at BWX Technologies’ Lynchburg, Va., plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning a public, predecisional enforcement conference at its Rockville, Md., headquarters with the company.
“We will contact you promptly to determine a mutually agreeable date and time” for the conference, the NRC wrote in a June 6 letter to James Bittner, BWX Technology’s (BWXT) vice president and general manager in Lynchburg.
On June 19, 2020, a flash fire killed a BWXT employee in the Lynchberg facility’s supercompactor facility. The employee was pronounced dead at the scene by an emergency response team.
The supercompactor crushes drums into cylinders, called pucks, for disposal. On June 19, two of the drums that had been crushed in the facility contained alcohol-soaked rags with more than enough flammable liquid in them to feed the fatal fire, which was touched off by degraded wiring that had been rubbed bare on a cable connected to some instruments near the compactor, according to NRC’s letter to Bittner.
There was a similar fire at the supercompactor in 2007, the NRC wrote, prompting BWXT to stop crushing drums containing rags. But in 2012, BWXT decided to resume the practice, which now has contributed to the death of a worker in Lynchburg, where among other things the company fabricates uranium fuel for the Navy.
NRC, in its letter to Bittner, wrote that the employee in the June 19 accident died when “approximately 25-gallons of isopropyl alcohol and associated flammable vapors” ignited after “the operator entered the compactor cell and had either direct or indirect interaction with the bare wires,” according to the NRC letter.
After the fire, NRC conducted inspections in Lynchburg between July 1, 2020, and March 5, 2021. As a result, the agency discovered five apparent violations now “being considered for escalated enforcement action.”
The five apparent violations, according to NRC’s letter, were failure to:
- Implement the established Fire Protection Program and work area spill response requirements to control the accumulation of flammable liquids necessary to prevent fires from occurring.
- Minimize the amount of alcohol present in drums compacted for disposal.
- Take the necessary precautions to control ignition sources and prevent the ignition of flammable vapors.
- Maintain process safety information in the Integrated Safety Analysis (ISA) that was complete and accurate in all material respects.
- Assure the adequate evaluation of the change to the supercompactor prior to implementing the change.
Since the fire, NRC wrote in its letter, BWXT has stopped compacting 55 gallons drums containing low-level radioactive solid waste in the supercompactor.
