Management for a Y-12 building found its emergency notification system in “degrading condition” due to its volume levels lowering, according to a September nuclear watchdog report.
The buildings in question are Building 9204-2E and Building 9204-2, which are conjoined by a section of a wall. While work orders have been placed to repair the emergency system in 9204-2, the orders were not reported by maintenance, the report said. A “severe weather event” in September degraded the emergency system “to the point where only short portions of announcements could be heard,” DNFSB said, so the request was elevated.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) wrote in its report that Building 9204-2 relies on speakers throughout the building to sound an alarm to communicate an emergency with a system extended from a “credited” system in Building 9204-2E.
Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the joint-venture management and operating contractor in charge of Y-12, reportedly replaced the speakers and detection probes in 9204-2E recently, but “did not upgrade or repair the aging portion” of the emergency system in 9204-2, the report said. CNS instead relies on “dedicated horns” and the speakers to distribute the alarm throughout Building 9204-2.
As part of compensatory measures for the degrading emergency system, management required personnel to carry radios in Building 9204-2 after the system in 9204-2E was deemed “operable,” DNFSB said.
Building 9204-2E houses the assembly and disassembly of the nation’s nuclear stockpile components, evaluation of the quality of stockpile components, as well as dismantling of components not needed anymore. It is one of two buildings that will stay operational after many older Y-12 buildings are replaced for the Uranium Processing Facility. Building 9204-2 produces non-nuclear material for production, and is a Manhattan Project-era facility that was used to separate uranium-235 for experiments.