DOE Oversight Board Releases Critical Assessment of SRS Plutonium Pit Plant, Presents Safety Observations in Advance of Facility’s “Preliminary Design,” to “Ensure Adequate Protection of Public Health and Safety”
Ruling by Federal Judge on Public Interest Lawsuit on the Plutonium Pit Issue Expected Soon
Columbia, SC — The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), an independent agency that conducts oversight of Department of Energy projects and operations, has prepared its first initial review of the proposed plutonium pit plant slated for the Savannah River Site. Finding DOE plans lacking, the board has presented eight substantive recommendations.
The DNFSB report, titled Conceptual Design Review of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, was dated November 5, 2021 and was quietly posted on the board’s website in late January. The DNFSB has committed in the board‘s 2021 report to Congress that the independent review of the “conceptual design” of the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) would be completed in 2021.
DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has proposed converting the partially finished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS into a bomb factory capable of producing 50 or more plutonium pits per year. A pit is the core of a nuclear weapon and DOE wants new pits to initially fuel two new types of nuclear weapons, both designed to keep the US on the dangerous footing to fight a full-scale nuclear war.
The DNFSB report addresses areas of major concern with the pit plant preliminary design, including worker safety, seismic events, explosion events, release of radiological materials (e.g. plutonium powder) and proper application of design standards to key systems, structures and components.
Areas of particular concern covered in the report include Portions of the Accident Analysis Underestimate the Radiological Release from a Seismic Event and Safety Analyses Inadequately Document Potential Explosion Events.
The report cites a number of “explosion event” possibilities, and says that “the current safety analyses provide insufficient documentation of assumptions supporting the…overall accident progression for some explosion events, [or the] resulting amount of radiological material released. Explosions reviewed include a hydrogen or steam explosion and “several explosion events involve furnaces containing molten plutonium.” The pit plant could use molten plutonium to cast the pits.
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Full SRS Watch media advisory, March 9, 2022: SRSW news on DNFSB review of pit plant March 9 2022
Photos: Terminated SRS MOX plant, by High Flyer