Jeremy L. Dillon
WC Monitor
7/24/2015
The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments’ Office of Enforcement announced this week that it would launch an investigation into an incident in which two workers were exposed to a potassium hydroxide spill at the Portsmouth DUF6 Conversion Plant earlier this year. According to a letter to operating contractor BWXT Conversion Services, OEA plans to look “into the facts and circumstances associated with the potassium hydroxide injury event at the Portsmouth DUF6 Conversion Plant on March 25, 2015.”
BWXT reported the injury to the Department of Energy, and according to company spokeswoman Aimee Mills, “BWXT Conversion Services is engaged with the Office of Enforcement and will provide full support to the investigation.” BWXT said it May in was conducting its own detailed causal factors analysis (CFA) that was expected to take several weeks to complete.
The accident involved two workers being exposed to potassium hydroxide spill while performing post-maintenance testing; one had to be airlifted to a medical facility for treatment, according to a DOE occurrence report. The Portsmouth DUF6 plant, along with a sister facility at the Department of Energy’s Paducah site, is intended to help dispose of more than 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride material stored in thousands of cylinders at the two sites.
