A subcontractor at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) broke a finger June 15 while performing routine maintenance on a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at the lab’s Energy Innovation Laboratory, an Energy Department spokesperson at the Idaho Falls facility said Monday.
It was the second work accident involving a worker’s hand at Idaho in June — a DOE employee on June 6 lost part of a finger after a drill-related accident during maintenance of the Advanced Test Reactor — and it prompted a swift, site-wide response by DOE officials, who suspended maintenance and construction work across the facility for about half a day to brief workers on the accident and assess whether similar hazards might exist at other work sites.
The worker injured June 15 has since been cleared to return to the job. The worker broke his finger after the digit got trapped between a belt and pulley driven by a fan in the ventilation system, said Edward Anderson, deputy director of facilities and site services at INL.
According to Anderson, the worker powered down the fan, verified it had stopped, but became entangled in the works anyway after a draft spun the idle fan and yanked the worker’s hand into the space between the pulley and the belt.
“He reversed the belt himself and freed his hand,” Anderson said. Afterward, the worker and a colleague notified their foreman about the accident and called 911. The worker was taken to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. “I followed that ambulance to the ER and spent time in the ER with him and his father,” Anderson said.
Idaho National Laboratory construction and maintenance projects employ about 500 workers, Anderson said, divided about evenly between subcontractors and INL prime Battelle Energy Alliance. The expansive complex, covering 890 square miles, includes experimental reactors and extensive waste treatment facilities.
Battelle Energy Alliance is wholly owned by Battelle, with junior partners BWXT, URS Corp., Electric Power Research Institute, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other university partners.
INL’s construction budget runs about $150 million to $200 million a year, according to Anderson.
