Maintenance Backlog Concerns Persist at Site
WC Monitor
7/18/2014
As the Department of Energy places an increased emphasis on maintenance activities following the incidents earlier this year that have shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, corrective maintenance backlogs continue to be an issue of concern at the Savannah River Site. Layoffs, furloughs and funding cuts at the site in the past two years have added to the backlog, which was first highlighted by Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff over a year ago in reports released in March and June 2013. Board staff again noted the issue in a report last month. “The corrective maintenance backlogs are larger than desired,” according to a recently released June 13 DNFSB site representative report. That adds up to 20 to 22 crew weeks for the site’s liquid waste contractor, Savannah River Remediation; and 16 crew weeks for M&O contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
The information reported comes from extent of condition reviews SRNS and SRR recently submitted to DOE in response to the events at WIPP. At SRNS, the corrective maintenance backlog for safety class and safety significant systems has increased by 42 percent over the last two years, while the average work order age increased from 328 days to 518 days, according to the Board report. Concerning SRR, the DNFSB report notes, “The SRR report highlighted the challenges they are having with old-style waste tanks, buried waste transfer lines, major components like the 2F evaporator, and buried infrastructure systems (e.g., instrument air and cooling water systems).” SRR and SRNS referred request for comment to the DOE Savannah River Operations Office, which did not respond to request for comment.
New SRNS President Carol Johnson said this month she is “worried” about a lack of progress in addressing the maintenance backlog, but noted that SRNS does have a maintenance improvement plan and is also recruiting new people to work in the area. “I do think that there are some efficiencies we need to make in our work planning and control process to make it less burdensome for people doing the work,” Johnson said. “We need to tackle that problem. We’ve layered on and layered on paper into our system and that may not be adding value. I think that’s a targeted opportunity, but at the end of the day how much of an impact that is going to make on reducing the backlog is still to be determined.”
