While the United Steel Workers (USW) union supports advanced nuclear projects for its members, it wants to ensure that employee health and safety remain protected at advanced reactor projects
That’s the gist of supplemental comments filed with the Department of Energy in March by the union.
“USW represents workers across the Department of Energy nuclear complex who perform operations, maintenance, laboratory, health physics, waste removal, and other work under DOE contracts,” the union said in a March 23 submission. “These workers perform inherently hazardous jobs, and their safety depends on strong, clear, and enforceable worker protection requirements.
“USW supports the continued growth and expansion of the nuclear energy sector, and believes that maintaining strong worker safety and health protections is essential to ensuring that efforts to expedite development do not create avoidable risks that could undermine the long-term success of this work,” the USW said.
“Unsafe working conditions do not accelerate project delivery, but instead results in injuries, work stoppages, investigations, and rework that delays project completion,” the union went on to say.
In January, DOE published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register to amend certain standards for worker safety and health, including at pilot program test reactors under DOE jurisdiction. The first comment deadline was in February. But on Feb. 26, DOE extended the deadline until March 23 after the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) requested more time.
“The current Part 851 framework reflects decades of experience addressing serious safety and health hazards across DOE sites,” the USW said. “These requirements established a consistent and enforceable baseline where earlier approaches had proven insufficient. Any revisions to this framework should clearly demonstrate that worker protections will be maintained or improved.”
The USW and its members fear that new standards proposed by DOE would relax certain occupational exposure levels that workers have long relied upon, according to the comments.
“Workers have raised concern that these changes would permit higher exposure levels for chemical and physical hazards known to cause illness and long-term disease. At DOE sites, more protective exposure limits have been critical in identifying and addressing overexposures,” USW said. For example, at the Paducah site, workers engaged in deactivation, and surveillance, and maintenance work and “have experienced exposures to noise and to airborne contaminants generated during cutting and welding processes, including nitrogen dioxide, manganese fumes, and iron oxide.”
This could result in increased occupational illnesses, the USW said.