Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
3/6/2015
In an incident now under investigation, it took nearly a month for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the managing contractor for the Savannah River Site, to notice that a tank agitator at the H-Canyon facility was down, which compromised one of the facility’s nuclear criticality controls. The incident occurred after electrical power was cut to HB-Line and H-Canyon on Jan. 7, when wind blew a loose ground wire into an electrical feeder and caused a short. The backup diesel generator came on and allowed for “an orderly and safe shutdown of operations,” SRNS said in a statement issued late last week. Normal power came back on the next day and operations resumed at the facility.
However, the agitator did not come back online, an issue that wasn’t discovered until Feb. 3, when a sample from an HB Line hold tank came out different from the expected value. “It was determined that the cause of the unexpected sample value was that the agitators in the tank were not operating and had not been operating since the loss of power in January,” according to SRNS. “One of the nuclear criticality controls for the hold tank is that a sample is taken and verified to be below the nuclear material concentration limit before transferring to H Canyon. Without an operating agitator, the concentration analyzed in the sample is potentially not representative of the solution in the tank. However, the hold tank solutions transferred since 1/7/2014 were subsequently verified to be well below all nuclear criticality limits; therefore, at no time was a nuclear criticality possible.”
DOE ‘Monitoring’ SRNS Investigation Into Incident
The latest issue comes after a string of conduct of operations concerns for SRNS and H-Canyon, as well as concerns regarding deferred maintenance at the facility and others across the site. SRNS said this week it identified the agitator issue and cause of the loss. “SRNS initiated an investigation of this event and is currently conducting a root cause analysis to identify the underlying causes of the event. Based upon the results of the review, corrective actions will be identified to address the underlying causes,” according to SRNS.
The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Operations Office is “monitoring the SRNS investigation and is concerned any time a safety related incident occurs,” according to DOE-SR spokesman Jim Giusti. “SRNS has initiated an investigation of this event to identify the underlying causes of the event. Based upon the results of the review, SRNS will identify corrective actions to address the underlying causes and DOE will validate that process.”
SRS Watch: Incident of ‘Heightened Concern’
The event is a concern in the context of the numerous recent issues at H-Canyon, said Tom Clements of the advocacy group SRS Watch. "This latest incident with H-Canyon is of heightened concern given the chronic nature of operational and equipment problems with the aging facility,” Clements said in a written response. “While the contractor and DOE review issues such as this one and implement corrective action plans, it’s clear that equipment problems continue at unacceptable rate and that questions linger about effective training of personnel. For the facility to operate more safely, it will take a major financial investment into the building, equipment in it and the training of personnel who operate it. I’m afraid if maintenance continues to be postponed and that if personnel continue to fail to follow established safety procedures that abrupt and long-term shut down of the degraded facility could be looming.”
