Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
1/15/2016
Some of the World War II-era facilities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., are on the verge of falling down, but the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office (NPO) – which oversees Y-12 and its sister plant, Pantex – doesn’t have a structural engineer on its oversight staff.
That reportedly has been an ongoing issue raised by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which identified it as a “weakness” at the federal office in Oak Ridge. According to a newly released Nov. 20, 2015, memo by safety board staff assigned to Y-12, the site reps have previously raised this issue and suggested it could inhibit the ability to “address the ongoing structural degradation at Y-12.”
The memo said NNSA’s Production Office had recently arranged for a structural engineer at DOE’s Oak Ridge Office to be detailed to Y-12 for several weeks to provide support, but it’s not clear if the NNSA has upgraded its staff capabilities for the longer term.
The agency would not identify the engineer on detail at Y-12 or say if planned to hire an engineer full-time at the NPO. “We are declining comment as this is a personnel matter,” NNSA spokesman Steven Wyatt said.
The concerns at Y-12 include the deterioration of Beta-2, an old facility that houses Y-12’s weapons work with lithium. The structural engineer on loan to NPO reportedly evaluated design plans for a steel frame to address a cracked concrete beam discovered at Beta-2 in early 2015.
Other Y-12 facilities, including 9212, the main uranium-processing facility for the weapons program, have structural issues.
