Nuclear Weapons: Information on Safety Concerns with the Uranium Processing Facility Page: 13 of 21
This text is part of the collection entitled: Government Accountability Office Reports and was provided to UNT Digital Library by the UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Safety Safety concern identified by the Defense Actions taken by the National Nuclear Security
concern Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (Safety Administration (NNSA) to address safety concern
number Board) with the Uranium Processing
Facility (UPF)
following an earthquake.
7 The UPF project downgraded the seismic NNSA committed to upgrade the seismic rating of
rating of the facility's criticality prevention certain criticality prevention controls.
controls, meaning that the controls will not
be designed to reliably survive an
earthquake and prevent a criticality accident.
8 The UPF project team has stated its intent to NNSA clarified that these standards are included in
implement Institute of Electrical and UPF design documents.
Electronics Engineers standards for the
reliability of safety controls used to prevent
explosions but has not formally detailed this
approach in the project's planning
documents.
Status of six safety concerns where NNSA is completing the corrective action, which Safety
Board officials said they will review once the actions are completed
9 The UPF project downgraded the seismic NNSA clarified that it expects the contractor to ensure
rating of the criticality accident alarm worker response to an earthquake would be the same
system, meaning that the system will not be as worker response to a criticality alarm.
designed to function during and following an
earthquake, relying instead on fire alarms to
initiate evacuation after an earthquake.d
10 The structural engineering design is robust, NNSA is conducting multiple studies that are intended
but a Safety Board letter raised a technical to resolve technical and quality issues with the
and quality assurance concern associated computer program.
with a computer program, which is in use at
multiple projects across DOE, including the
UPF, for analyzing soil-structure interaction.
11 The fire suppression system was assumed NNSA conducted a new analysis of fire scenarios,
to be sufficient to protect against both large including, among other things, limiting the quantities of
and small fires. However, small fires may hazardous materials in certain gloveboxes. The Safety
not provide sufficient heat to activate the fire Board staff communicated further concerns with this
suppression system, or may be located in analysis, such as the potential for concurrent fires in
gloveboxes-a containment system of multiple gloveboxes and NNSA's failure to demonstrate
secured gloves attached to a box that allows that the fire suppression system will control hazardous
workers to process nuclear material inside material releases from smaller fires occurring outside of
the box without risk of contamination- gloveboxes. In response, NNSA committed to
where the suppression system will not performing additional analyses to address the Safety
provide coverage. Board's concerns.GAO-14-79R Nuclear Weapons
Page 13
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This text can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Text.
United States. Government Accountability Office. Nuclear Weapons: Information on Safety Concerns with the Uranium Processing Facility, text, October 25, 2013; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc302471/m1/13/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.