The prime contractor for the Y-12 National Security Complex is tightening its criticality safety program and increasing oversight and monitoring of that regime to prevent an accidental nuclear chain reaction, following a recent federal report that deemed the existing program at the main U.S. uranium processing site “inadequate.”
The Oak Ridge, Tenn., site houses National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) production and refurbishment of the uranium secondary stages of nuclear weapons. After a month-long inspection there last year, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) reported “widespread non-compliance” with Department of Energy nuclear criticality safety best practices, along with “inadequate federal oversight” by the local NNSA office.
That is according to a DNFSB report dated July 25 and published Wednesday.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, too much uranium accumulated unexpectedly in some uranium processing equipment at Y-12’s World War II-era Building 9212. This was the manifestation of what the DNFSB, in its report, categorized as “system issues with the Y-12 criticality safety program.”
“This accumulation did not represent any risk to employees or the public,” a spokesperson for Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Security wrote Thursday in an email. The company “is continuing to aggressively address the underlying causes of these accumulations” and working on changes to its nuclear criticality safety program that include “procedure revisions, enhanced technical training, stronger qualification standards, additional oversight, and performance monitoring.”
The independent federal DNFSB does not regulate the NNSA or the Department of Energy. The roughly $30-million-a-year agency has resident inspectors at Oak Ridge and other current and former nuclear weapons production sites and labs. It may issue safety recommendations about these sites with which the secretary of energy must publicly agree or disagree.
Congress created the DNFSB to protect the public from the hazards of defense nuclear sites. Naval nuclear reactor operations are exempt from the board’s oversight.
