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Thursday, March 18, 2010
UPDATED: Nuclear Safety Board Questions Energy Department
By Sue Major Holmes
Associated Press
The board that oversees nuclear safety in the U.S. Department of Energy's weapons complex has warned that the DOE's interpretation of nuclear safety management regulations could mean higher radiation exposure to the public if an accident occurs.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, in a letter Monday to Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman, questioned the National Nuclear Security Administration's approval of safety analyses in which radiation doses to the public are above the guidelines. NNSA is the DOE agency in charge of the nuclear weapons complex.
"Such approval implies that exceeding the evaluation guideline is an acceptable outcome," board vice chairman John E. Mansfield wrote.
The DOE conducts safety analyses of facilities to identify hazards and ways to control any that could result in more than 25 rems, a measurement of radiation exposure. By contrast, Americans get an annual dose of about 360 millirems from everything from an X-ray at the dentist's to naturally occurring background radiation. A millirem is a thousandth of a rem.
The letter said the 25-rem level "is not considered an acceptable public exposure; rather, its use sets a clear guideline for establishing when to invoke an effective set of safety class controls that reduce the potential dose consequences to the public to acceptably low values."
Nuclear facilities analyze accident scenarios, and those that might result in radiation exposure above the guidelines require "safety class" controls — fail-safe mechanisms to protect the public, workers and the environment.
The board believes controls — such as a ventilation system or fire suppression — should reduce exposure to a "small fraction" of the 25 rems, said Peter Winokur, a member of the independent safety board that examines worst-case scenarios at the nuclear facilities and makes recommendations to lower risks.
"Once they apply controls, those controls can reduce the dose significantly," he said.
In the process of making recommendations for the plutonium facility at northern New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, the board discovered NNSA had a different interpretation of the reduction, Winokur said.
"We don't understand whether this is a new DOE-wide interpretation, or is this NNSA or other parts of DOE," he said.
The board's letter said the DOE "is essentially nullifying" standards used for years by accepting safety analyses that allow consequences greater than the guidelines'.
The board has given the NNSA 60 days to list which defense nuclear facilities do not have controls to reduce potential radiation doses below the guidelines and what might keep those facilities from meeting guidelines.
NNSA spokesman Damien LaVera said Wednesday the agency will respond once it reviews the letter.
"We recognize that the safety of the public, our workers and the environment is critical to the accomplishment of our national security mission, and that appropriate use of our safety guidelines is key to our safety strategy," he said.
Greg Mello of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group said the question is fundamental: "Do you have mandatory or optional safety standards?"
He worries about not just accidents, but also sabotage.
"It's all well and good to say that these bad things will never happen, but if safety class equipment isn't there ... then the consequences for things no one talks about get a lot worse," Mello said.
The board's letter cited NNSA's approval of a safety analysis for Los Alamos lab's Technical Area 55 as an example of a questioned analysis.
Last October, the board said a major earthquake could cause a catastrophic fire triggering a massive radiation leak at the lab's main plutonium facility, releasing up to 100 times more radiation than permitted by DOE standards.
Winokur said, however, board members who visited Los Alamos two weeks ago "got a firm commitment to reduce the offsite dose."
"There's no disagreement between the board" and Los Alamos National Security LLC, which runs the lab for the DOE, he said. "We asked them point-blank, and they said they will do that."
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