The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has agreed to give the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office a 90-day extension to answer board questions about welding issues for containers at the Hanford Site at Richland, Wash.
As a result, the DOE Office of Environmental Management will have until March 16 to address DNFSB questions for transportable storage containers closure welding process at Hanford’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage.
The extension was granted in a one-page letter dated Dec. 30 from Patricia Lee, who is currently the lone member of what is set up as a five-member DNFSB board.
In a Dec. 16 letter, Tim Walsh, DOE’s assistant secretary for Environmental Management said it would take some time to draft a response. Walsh said in the letter that DOE wants to ensure “the long-term confinement integrity” of the storage containers at the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility.
The storage facility is built to relocate Hanford capsules containing radioactive cesium and strontium from wet to dry storage.
According to the initial Oct. 16 letter from the board, DNFSB did its own review of welds on certain containers and questioned if DOE was conducting sufficient monitoring to ensure quality of the welds.