Officials: No nuclear release

From Jackson Hole Daily: Officials: No nuclear release

An accident at Idaho National Laboratory on Nov. 8 did not release nuclear material into the atmosphere, but through gross oversight it did expose 16 workers to radiation, officials and a new report state.

The “Accident Investigation Report” blames the incident on numerous oversights and errors by personnel at various levels in the chain of command at the Materials and Fuels Complex Zero Power Physics Reactor.

As for the threat that nuclear material was released at the facility 90 miles west of and downwind from Jackson, INL officials said there were “no findings of contamination outside the facility.”

The report — compiled by an independent board for the U.S. Department of Energy — provides a fairly scathing rebuke of the safety systems in place at the reactor, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free executive director James Powell said. The watchdog group run by Powell is based in Jackson and has opposed projects at the Idaho facility.

The accident occurred when workers were packaging fuel for shipment at the Zero Power Physics Reactor. The workers encountered plastic wrapping and tape around a plutonium fuel plate.

“Two of the fuel storage containers had atypical labels indicating potential abnormalities with the fuel plates located inside,” the report states. “Upon opening one of the storage containers, the workers discovered a [plutonium] fuel plate wrapped in plastic and tape.”

Plutonium fuel plates are typically wrapped in a metal shell, Powell said.

Workers stopped after seeing the suspicious packaging, but a supervisor told them to proceed, according to the report.

“[The] management system did not require the immediate supervisor and the manager to call in other subject matter and facility expertise for consultation prior to approving work to continue,” the report says. “When the workers attempted to remove the wrapping material, an uncontrolled release of radioactive contaminants occurred, resulting in the contamination of 16 workers and the facility.”

The workers had on lab coats, and a few had gloves, but none had respiratory gear or other protective clothing, according to the 123-page report. Workers conducted the work in a fume hood, a partially closed space with a ventilation system that still allows workers to come in physical contact with the material, the report said.

The proper way to work with plutonium fuel plates would have been in a glove box, a sealed device with two gloves that allows workers to manipulate the material without coming in contact with or being exposed to the same air as the contents, the report stated.

Staff were slow to respond, the report says.

“[Plutonium] awareness training has not been effective in giving workers a full appreciation of plutonium hazards,” the report says. “This lack of awareness contributed to the workers delaying their evacuation for nearly four minutes until they heard the radiation alarm.”

The board found that “elements of the emergency management and response program were not fully effective,” the report states. “The absence of a hazards analysis for this accident scenario hampered timely decision-making. An earlier activation of the emergency response organization would have supported a more coordinated and timely response. Not having analyzed this accident scenario also limited the effectiveness of the medical response.”

The board cited two different instances, one in 2009 and the other in 2010, when Materials and Fuels Complex managers were presented with a report on the dangers of plutonium fuel plate handling that “offered recommendations for safer handling practices,” the report said.

“[I]ts significance was not recognized and no action was taken,” it said.

The report is pretty damning to the facility and its management, Powell said.

“There’s not anything that was done right here,” he said. “At the operation level, you had a failure of worker training. You had management that were either unaware of appropriate control measures or did not enact any of these procedures. At the senior management level, they accepted this risk knowing that there were deficiencies in the safety basis of this facility.”

Powell said that, in the face of increasing budget cuts, shuttered facilities like the Zero Power Physics Reactor don’t get much funding or attention.

“A lot of the problems that were happening here were kind of put on the back burner,” he said.

Idaho National Laboratory officials don’t anticipate any adverse effects to the 16 people who were contaminated with radiation, Misty Benjamin, a spokeswoman for the national laboratory, said. All 16 people are back to work at the laboratory, though two are currently not working in radiological facilities as health care providers continue to monitor them.

Benjamin couldn’t comment on any personnel changes resulting from the accident.

“Many corrective actions began immediately after the incident,” she said. “We are investigating right now.

“We’re working on decontamination of the facility and health monitoring of our employees,” Benjamin said.