The Energy Department’s prime cleanup contractor for the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in upstate New York must explain to DOE how it will improve its policy to protect workers at the former plutonium separation facility from heat stress, but will otherwise face no penalties for an August incident during which a worker at the facility suffered from symptoms of the condition.
That is according to a formal enforcement letter to URS Energy & Construction from Steven Simonson, director of the DOE Office of Enterprise Assessments Office of Enforcement. The correspondence, dated June 28, was posted on the DOE website.
“The Office of Enforcement has concluded that URS recognizes the safety significance of heat stress hazards and the complexities associated with performing [deactivation and decommissioning] work in highly contaminated and aged facilities such as SPRU,” Simonson wrote. His office also “requests that URS provide any heat stress program improvements that will be implemented at SPRU,” according to the letter.
DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments made the decision following an on-site visit to SPRU from Feb. 22-24. The agency gave the contractor 30 days from June 28 to respond with the requested information.
“We are pleased that the Office of Enforcement concluded after their onsite investigation that we recognize the significance of heat stress hazards and complexities of work in highly contaminated and aged facilities such as SPRU,” a URS Energy spokesperson said by email Tuesday. “We also acknowledge and take seriously the two concerns raised by the Office of Enforcement. We will continue to take corrective actions and make improvements in our heat stress program to reinforce our safety program at SPRU.”
Heat stress in an umbrella term for a series of medical conditions that could result when the human body is unable to cool itself by sweating. Heat stroke, which can be fatal, is the most severe of these. The URS Energy worker who displayed symptoms of heat stress last year at SPRU building G2 did not actually have heat stress, EA noted in a December letter to the contractor.
URS Energy & Construction, an AECOM subsidiary, is deactivating and decommissioning the H2 and G2 buildings at the Separations Process Research Unit under a nine-year, $145-million cost-plus contract set to expire Dec. 21. The facilities were used in the 1950s to study chemical processes for separating plutonium from irradiated uranium.
