[ RadSafe ] Review faults Sandia risk assessments

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Review faults Sandia risk assessments
NASA awards UT Southwestern $9.8 million grant to study radiation
GE Gets Taiwan Nuclear Plant Contract
Quake Had More Impact on Wash. Nuke Plant
PG&E Still Thinks Missing Nuclear Fuel At Humboldt Plant
Report: Lab didn't follow procedures for departing employees
Richardson wants feds to protect lab benefits and pensions
===============================================

Review faults Sandia risk assessments

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Sandia National Laboratories has not adequately 
assessed risks to the public from an accident involving one of its 
reactors, a federal report concludes.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's report, dated Dec. 10, 
was released Friday by the Washington, D.C.-based Project on 
Government Oversight, known as POGO.

The evaluation "noted no unsafe operations during the course of the 
review," but found deficiencies in safety procedures and documents.

"The problem is that if there is indeed an accident, they have a 
serious problem" because the lab underestimated possible radiation 
doses or how far and fast a hazardous plume could travel, Pete 
Stockton, a senior investigator for POGO, said by telephone.

"So the issue is one of safety analysis. In case of an accident, what 
is the impact, and you have to protect public health and safety," 
Stockton said.

John German, head of media relations for Sandia, said the lab has 
been aware of the concerns for months and that "corrective actions 
are being completed now."

"The draft report that POGO has publicized is further evidence that 
the oversight process is working as it should," he said. "The NNSA 
independent review was part of the routine oversight the NNSA 
provides for the lab's reactor facilities, and the lab welcomes and 
values its input and recommendations."

The report found no immediate threat to lab workers or the public, 
German said.

The December assessment of safety analyses found deficiencies in the 
lab's evaluation for Sandia's pulsed reactor facility - specifically, 
the team found it "not credible" that people at a nearby golf course 
or stables could be evacuated in time to avoid plumes of hazardous 
material that might be released.

"Thus, the best that can be achieved is the mitigation of any doses 
that the public may receive from an accident," the report said.

It also faulted Sandia for "incomplete consideration" of the impact 
of accidents on workers in the area and its analysis of types of 
accidents and how to handle them.

The team also found shortcomings in the analysis for Sandia's annular 
core research reactor, saying the radiation dose from an accident 
there could be significant.

It also said that in some cases, both natural and manmade hazards 
weren't properly identified and assessed, and that the lab failed to 
justify why it didn't evaluate certain hazards.

The team said the Sandia site office appears capable of correcting 
most of the issues. However, among other things the report 
recommended updating the office's review and approval procedures and 
developing screening standards to evaluate the adequacy of safety 
documents.

The report also criticized a corrective action plan Sandia developed 
to address issues raised in a letter last September from the Defense 
Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The team said the plan lacked 
timetables and details.
------------------

NASA awards UT Southwestern $9.8 million grant to study radiation

DALLAS (AP) - Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern 
Medical Center were awarded a $9.8 million, five-year NASA grant to 
study radiation's effects on astronauts and how to reduce the 
possible health risks caused by space travel.

UT Southwestern, which announced its involvement Thursday, and the 
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School were selected 
by a peer review for the grant from the 11 applications submitted.

The money will establish the NASA Specialized Center of Research for 
the Estimation of Solid Tumor Cancer Risks from Space Radiation.

"The implications of radiation in space on the human body are not 
well understood, and this grant will enable us to examine the 
consequences and risks," said Dr. Jerry Shay, a professor of cell 
biology who worked on UT's application for the grant.

Part of the new center's work will focus on eliminating cancer cells 
in patients and increasing the understanding of radiation's effects.

"From this research we also expect to learn much that will help us in 
prevention and treatment of cancer here on Earth. We look forward to 
working closely with NASA in this endeavor," said Dr. John Minna, who 
will become director of the new NASA center at UT Southwestern.

UT Southwestern previously received a $5 million, five-year NASA 
grant in 1993. It helped establish a physiology center to study the 
mechanisms that allow living organisms to adjust to changing demands 
from their environment.

Similar NASA specialized centers have been set up at Colorado State 
University, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Loma Linda University.
----------------

GE Gets Taiwan Nuclear Plant Contract

NEW YORK (AP) - General Electric Co. said Wednesday that it received 
a multimillion-dollar contract to upgrade monitoring and control 
systems at a Taiwanese nuclear power plant.

GE did not provide the exact value of the contract in a news release.

The deal, awarded to GE Energy's nuclear business, includes the 
design, engineering and training associated with installing a digital 
measurement analysis and control technology at the 1,272-megawatt 
Chin Shan plant on the northern tip of the island. The company said 
it will also customize the hardware and software for the plant.

GE Energy is also working on other projects in Taiwan, including two 
boiling water reactors at the Lungmen nuclear power station in 
northeastern Taiwan.
----------------

Quake Had More Impact on Wash. Nuke Plant

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - The impact of a severe earthquake on a 
radioactive waste treatment plant under construction at the Hanford 
nuclear reservation is almost 40 percent greater than previously 
estimated, according to a new study.

The nearly $6 billion plant - the federal government's largest 
construction project - is being built to treat millions of gallons of 
highly radioactive waste left from Cold War-era nuclear weapons 
production.

Construction is already about 35 percent complete at the south-
central Washington site. Work has been slowed or shifted to other 
parts of the plant while engineers re-evaluate its design.

The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages the site cleanup, and 
the contractor hired to build the plant stressed the chances of a 
severe earthquake at the site are slim.

In addition, some construction work that already has been re-
evaluated - the concrete walls at the plant, for instance - meet the 
new seismic requirements and will not have to be changed.

"Earthquakes, No. 1, don't happen a lot in this area, and if they do 
happen, we are building a very robust plant to handle it," Roy 
Schepens, manager of the Energy Department's Office of River 
Protection, said Thursday.

In 2002, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised concerns 
that the Energy Department had failed to adequately investigate the 
impact a severe earthquake might have on the plant.

The agency had gathered seismic data from the entire 586-square-mile 
Hanford reservation to determine the impact, but did not conduct a 
seismic investigation of the plant site itself.

The agency conducted a more thorough evaluation in 2004; the data 
were sent to a federal science laboratory for review.

The results of that review - released first to The Associated Press 
this week - found the force of the ground movements at the plant site 
during a worst-case-scenario earthquake would be 38 percent greater 
than previously estimated.

Engineers now are working to apply that new number to the plant's 
design; the process could take four to six months, Schepens said.

"In the near term, we will develop very conservative design criteria 
that will allow us to advance the design and construction 
activities," he said.

Whether the new data will affect the cost and schedule of the work 
has not yet been determined, Schepens said.

For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's 
nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion 
to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.

About 1,700 people have been working to build the plant, which will 
stand 12 stories tall and be about the size of four football fields.
----------------

PG&E Still Thinks Missing Nuclear Fuel At Humboldt Plant

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PCG) continues 
to believe that three missing nuclear fuel rod segments are either in 
a storage facility at its long-shuttered Humboldt Bay power plant or 
at an offsite nuclear waste facility.

But in a press release Wednesday, PG&E also said as a result of its 
seven- month investigation into the whereabouts of the missing 18-
inch rod segments, it also concluded there is a small amount of 
additional non-fuel radioactive material the company can't locate.

The additional missing material was part of plant instrumentation and 
amounts to less than 0.006 of an ounce, which is "most probably" at a 
low-level nuclear waste facility, the utility holding company said.

In an interim report to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, PG&E said its 
efforts to locate the missing fuel rod segments suggest they were in 
the spent fuel pool all along, but were broken into smaller pieces at 
some point during their storage.

PG&E has found fragments in the pool, which is 26-to-30 feet deep and 
measures 22-by-28 feet. But "unfortunately, their condition after 40 
years of being stored under other components in the pool makes 
positive identification extremely difficult," Greg Rueger, senior 
vice president for generation and chief nuclear officer said in a 
statement.

"The results of the investigation to date, while inconclusive, 
support our original belief that the segments are either in our 
possession in the used fuel pool or were shipped offsite to a 
licensed nuclear waste facility," Rueger said.

The company began an investigation in June when it discovered 
conflicting records indicating either that the fuel rod segments were 
stored in the used fuel pool in 1968 or were shipped to a licensed 
nuclear waste facility in 1969.

PG&E also said barriers in place at the plant were sufficient to 
detect and prevent attempted theft of the fuel rod segments, which it 
added are of insufficient quality and quantity to construct an 
effective so-called dirty bomb or a nuclear weapon.

PG&E expects to submit a final report on the investigation in the 
second quarter of 2005.

The Humboldt plant, near Eureka, Calif., was closed in 1976 and is 
slated for decommissioning, with spent fuel moved to dry cask 
storage.
----------------

Report: Lab didn't follow procedures for departing employees

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Employees who quit their jobs at Los Alamos 
National Laboratory regularly failed to turn in security badges and 
complete other measures to ensure they no longer had access to 
classified information or nuclear material, according to a report.

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Energy, which 
oversees the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab, began 
investigating last year after concerns that disks and other lab 
property containing secret information might have been going home 
with departing employees.

The investigation found that the lab did not follow correct 
termination procedures for more than 40 percent of 305 former 
employees sampled.

The report released Friday stated that lab policies at the time 
didn't ensure that former employees "had their security clearances 
and access authorizations to classified matter and/or special nuclear 

material terminated in a timely matter."

Neglected steps in dismissals and retirements included security 
briefings and accounting for lab property.

While the investigation was going on, the lab was already reviewing 
its personnel policies, lab spokesman James Rickman said Friday.

"Essentially, the laboratory was aware of weaknesses in its 
outprocessing procedures in early 2003," he said.

Last December, the lab changed the way people leave their jobs, which 
Rickman said has resulted in nearly complete compliance with security 
policies.

The new policies, such as making termination procedures the 
responsibility of a manager rather than the employee, have not been 
around long enough to evaluate, the report said.

Before the changes, employees leaving the lab were responsible for 
duties like turning in badges and making sure they no longer had 
security clearance.

Ten percent of the 1,668 employees who left between Jan. 1, 2002, and 
Feb. 25, 2004, didn't turn in their badges, according to the report. 
Forty-four of those had badges that allowed access to secret 
information and nuclear material, and some of the badges allowed 
access to other DOE sites, the report said.

Both Rickman and the report noted that no nuclear material, lab 
equipment or sensitive information has gone unaccounted for because 
of retired employees.

Los Alamos has suffered a series of management failures and security 
lapses. Most recently, fears surrounding two missing computer disks 
containing sensitive information resulted in a virtual shutdown of 
the lab last July. An investigation revealed the disks never existed.
------------------

Richardson wants feds to protect lab benefits and pensions

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Gov. Bill Richardson has voiced concerns about 
changes made by federal officials to a draft request for proposals 
regarding contract competition for Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Richardson, a former congressman and energy secretary, maintains that 

benefits and pensions of workers at one of the nation's premier 
nuclear weapons laboratories is a critical issue for lab employees 
and the rest of New Mexico.

"The men and women of Los Alamos national lab have made a great 
contribution to our nation's security at home and abroad. This 
competition should in no way harm them," Richardson said in a 
statement issued Friday.

The contract to manage Los Alamos is up for bid for the first time in 
the lab's 60-year-plus history.

Los Alamos has been managed by the University of California since the 
lab's inception as a top-secret World War II project to develop the 
atomic bomb. However, the Energy Department decided to put the 
contract up for bid after a series of management failures and 
security problems.

The impact of a potential switch in lab managers on employee benefits 
has been a source of concern within the lab and among state leaders 
and the congressional delegation.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Source Evaluation 
Board announced changes to the request for proposals - some dealing 
with pension and retirement issues - in a document released last 
week.

The evaluation board ensured that the winner of the contract would 
have to provide a total compensation package for all employees that 
is "substantially equivalent" to the benefits and pensions provided 
by the current contract with the University of California.

Workers would be able to transfer their accrued service credit and 
leave balances with the new lab manager, according to the board.

Richardson said the pension plan offered by UC is a key part of the 
university's ability to attract and retain top scientists and other 
employees.

"This competition is about ensuring what is best for the nation and 
the laboratory, not just about ensuring competition for competition's 
sake," he said.

The board will accept comments from potential bidders through March 
4. The government plans to select a contractor this summer to begin 
work Oct. 1.

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Sandy Perle 
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations 
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc. 
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714 Extension 2306 
Fax:(949) 296-1144

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