There will be no emergency management drills at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina until early 2021, according to a recently posted weekly report on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s website.
An Aug. 21 report from board inspectors to Christopher Roscetti, the board’s technical director, indicated that leaders of the respective SRS field offices for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have agreed to “cancel or postpone” all emergency management drills until Jan. 5, 2021.
It was not clear whether the agency approved postponing drills because of the ongoing COVID-19 response at the site. Site management contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has previously sought permission to postpone drills for that reason, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). A DOE spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
However, NNSA facilities at SRS are still “allowed to perform drills that have minimum impact to site operations,” according to DNFSB’s latest weekly report about the site.
Energy Department nuclear properties such as the Savannah River Site are required to regularly test site capabilities to respond to emergencies that might involve anything from a fire, to an earthquake, tritium release, or an active shooter scenario.
A full-scale vetting of emergency operations at the site is supposed to occur every five years, with more focused testing occurring more frequently, according to an October 2018 report from the DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. The report looked at results of the full-blown exercise from 2018.
