The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Pantex Plant is successfully implementing its explosives safety program but must correct some practices that could be hazardous to personnel, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) determined in a program review released this week. The plant, responsible for nuclear explosives assembly, disassembly, and evaluation, is operated by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS). The review found that for the most part, “CNS has established and effectively implemented controls for reducing the risk associated with explosives operations.” It highlighted the system that determines the weights of explosives as a “best practice” and found that “Explosives systems engineers, scientists, facility management, and operating personnel are well trained.” The review lauded the plant’s “excellent” storage of explosives and said the explosives safety program is “comprehensive, well implemented, and provides a safe work environment for personnel and explosive materials.”
The most significant weakness identified in the report was “the stationing of personnel in the Zone 12 ramps as a compensatory measure during inoperability of a blast door interlock.” The review said allowing an individual “to control entry to an explosives operating bay” places that person at risk of being exposed “to overpressures and hazardous fragments or debris . . . in case of an accidental explosion inside the operating bay or an adjacent explosives operating bay.” The review also pointed out that many lightning protection systems (LPS) noncompliances identified in a 2010 assessment “remain unresolved with no current priority for correction.” These systems, meant to protect personnel and explosives from lightning strikes, were found to have both minor and significant “operability and maintenance issues” such as a frayed conductor and nonfunctioning LPS units that needed to be replaced.
The review called on CNS to address the stationing of personnel outside of nuclear explosives operating bays to control entry to those areas. It also recommended re-evaluating the findings of an explosives safety assessment conducted in 2010 to confirm that corrective actions will be taken, along with appointing an “Explosives Storage Review Committee” to monitor compliance with explosives storage requirements. It further suggested the NNSA Production Office establish “annual assessments with smaller scopes addressing only a portion of the explosive safety program elements each year such that all program elements are assessed within the required five-year period.”