{"id":1533,"date":"2009-05-03T11:33:02","date_gmt":"2009-05-03T16:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2009-05-03T11:33:36","modified_gmt":"2009-05-03T16:33:36","slug":"safety-issues-revealed-at-nuclear-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/03\/safety-issues-revealed-at-nuclear-facility\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety issues revealed at SRS nuclear facility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contractors used substandard materials
\nBy James Rosen<\/strong>
\njrosen@mcclatchydc.com<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Contractors at the Savannah River Site \u2014 one of the country\u2019s major nuclear-weapons complexes \u2014 repeatedly procured dangerous construction materials and components that failed to meet federal safety standards, according to a recently completed internal government probe.<\/p>\n

One of the substandard materials revealed at the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border \u201ccould have resulted in a spill of up to 15,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste,\u201d the inspector general of the U.S. Energy Department found.<\/p>\n

The five-month investigation also disclosed the purchase of 9,500 tons of substandard reinforcing steel at the SRS site near Aiken.<\/p>\n

The faulty steel was discovered after a piece of it broke during construction of a facility that will convert spent weapons plutonium and uranium into mixed-oxide \u2014 or MOX \u2014 fuel for civilian reactors.<\/p>\n

Replacement of 14 tons of the substandard \u201crebar\u201d \u2014 the reinforcing steel \u2014 that had already been installed cost $680,000 and caused new delays in completing the $4.8 billion MOX facility, the investigation disclosed.<\/p>\n

Among other questionable components identified in the probe were piping, steel plates, an unusable $12 million \u201cglovebox\u201d (used to handle contaminated materials), furnace module doors and robots used to eliminate human exposure to radiological and chemical materials.<\/p>\n

In an April 23 memo to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said contractors and subcontractors that build, supply and install equipment at SRS facilities ignored safety regulations developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe identified multiple instances in which critical components did not meet required quality and safety standards,\u201d Friedman wrote to Chu.<\/p>\n

The Savannah River Site produced tritium, plutonium-239 and other materials used to make nuclear weapons from 1954 to 1991, when the United States stopped making atomic bombs with the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scientists and technicians at the SRS site, one of several massive nuclear complexes around the country, still replenish tritium needed to maintain the United States\u2019 existing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

SRS is a large regional employer with about 10,000 workers, down from its peak of 25,000 in 1992.<\/p>\n

Many employees are engaged in a huge environmental cleanup effort to mediate decades of toxic nuclear waste production.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama\u2019s $787 billion economic-stimulus plan has $1.6 billion to accelerate the SRS cleanup, and hundreds of new workers already have been hired with the money.<\/p>\n

The DOE inspector general\u2019s probe found instances of hiring SRS subcontractors who sold standard commercial materials instead of the required military-grade components subjected to tougher testing during production under higher standards.<\/p>\n

One of the commercial subcontractors sold goods through retail catalogues.<\/p>\n

While the investigation focused on contractors and subcontractors, it said the Energy Department failed to adequately supervise them and demand that they meet established safety standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department did not provide adequate oversight of the prime contractors\u2019 quality-assurance programs at Savannah River,\u201d the report found. \u201cParticularly, the Department did not adequately establish and implement processes to detect and\/or prevent quality problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman\u2019s investigators, who were on-site at SRS from Sept. 30, 2008, until April 8, examined a representative sample of 10 procurements \u2014 government purchases \u2014 and found safety problems with each of them.<\/p>\n

Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department agency responsible for maintaining and securing the nation\u2019s nuclear weapons, disputed the findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cNNSA agrees with the recommendations presented in the report but does not agree with the stated conclusions concerning the safety of the facilities, related cost impacts or with the tone of the report,\u201d wrote William Ostendorff, its principal deputy administrator.<\/p>\n

Ostendorff said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had done a more extensive probe of safety issues at the MOX facility \u2014 one of three examined by the inspector general \u2014 and had concluded that the problems were \u201cviolations of low significance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some environmentalists and other critics cast the NRC as a weak regulator plagued by cozy relationships with the power utilities that own and operate the civilian nuclear reactors it is charged with licensing and overseeing.<\/p>\n

Heads of the Energy Department\u2019s Office of Environmental Management, in charge of waste cleanup at SRS and other nuclear complexes, didn\u2019t dispute the inspector general\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issues identified in this report represent a failure of contractors and subcontractors to properly implement existing requirements and policies,\u201d wrote Ines Triay, acting assistant secretary for environmental management.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnvironmental Management agrees that current practices can and should be enhanced to provide greater federal and contractor oversight,\u201d Triay wrote.<\/p>\n

Rosen covers Washington for McClatchy Newspapers in South Carolina.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contractors used substandard materials By James Rosen jrosen@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON \u2014 Contractors at the Savannah River Site \u2014 one of the country\u2019s major nuclear-weapons complexes \u2014 repeatedly procured dangerous construction materials and components that failed to meet federal safety standards, according … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}