The Y-12 National Security Complex’s safety system management at its Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) is “generally functioning well,” the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) concluded in a
review released late last month. The DOE office reviewed the facility’s safety significant secondary confinement system and safety significant power distribution system to assess controls meant to “reduce the risk resulting from a design basis fire and dispersion of nuclear materials,” EA said. It found that Y-12 managing contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) is operating the systems “in accordance with the documented safety analysis and technical safety requirements” and that “the feedback and improvement processes for HEUMF safety system management were generally functioning well.”
However, EA found several deficiencies that need to be addressed, including errors in technical safety requirements that set limitations to nuclear facilities based on safety analyses. These errors involved “a missing mode of applicability, a missing condition statement for the inoperability of one of two selected [secondary confinement system] exhaust fans, and an allowed completion time considerably longer than the supporting basis,” EA said. It also found that CNS “has not been performing the semi-annual bearing lubrication for two Secondary Confinement System support cooling fans” to ensure the fans will remain reliable under certain conditions and “was not demonstrating high efficiency particulate air filter efficiency for all potential maximum air flow configurations” in accordance with DOE regulations. These findings could “adversely affect the DOE mission, the environment, the safety or health of workers and the public, or national security,” the review said, issues for whichcorrective actions “must be developed.”
