A worker lost part of his finger during routine maintenance of the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to a notice the Department of Energy posted online.
The cause was a loop of wire the worker ran through the shaft of a drill socket, which was affixed to a handheld drill. As the worker operated the drill, the spinning loop of wire “entrapped the workers middle finger of the left hand causing severe trauma, which later resulted in a partial amputation of the finger,” the department said in a June 16 summary of the accident on its Operating Experience website: an online social hub where DOE contractors can share lessons learned and best practices.
The accident happened June 6, a spokesperson for the lab said.
The worker added the loop to the drill socket so the socket could be easily hung from a piece of equipment known as a pole hoist: essentially, a small, hand-operated crane used to lift things that are too heavy to be moved by hand.
The unauthorized modification, DOE wrote in its summary of the accident, “introduced an entrapment hazard that was not identified or mitigated.”
Idaho National Laboratory is managed by Battelle Energy Alliance for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. Battelle’s contract, awarded in 2005, runs through 2019, including options.
The 250-megawatt Advanced Test Reactor, built in 1967, is a testbed for technologies that might be useful for commercial and U.S. nuclear-navy reactors. In February, the White House requested roughly $170 million for the reactor for fiscal 2017, split between the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Naval Reactors Development account and DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
