Safety at the End of a Nuclear Facility's Life
- Kaiser-Hill, LLC (United States)
- Strategic Management Initiatives, Inc. (United States)
The objective of this paper is to capture the changes that are caused by the transition from nuclear operation through closure of defense nuclear facilities and convey lessons learned from their deactivation, decontamination and demolition. The specific area of discussion is focused on the planned reduction of safety equipment and consequent shift in hazard controls and safety management programs as the facility moves toward closure. The premise of the paper is that as the dominant hazards transition from nuclear to radiological and/or industrial, the facility control of the hazards and response to the potential upset conditions must transition as well to ensure safe and efficient operations. Using recent experience of the accelerated closure mission for U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) defense nuclear facilities at Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, the current culture with respect to developing and implementing hazard controls and response to upset conditions is illustrated. Several events have been documented that provide insight into the challenges facing line managers and safety professionals at the end of a facility's life cycle. Replacing permanent systems with temporary equipment challenges the traditional concept of reliability. Workers disassemble safety systems daily, but must rely on some of these components or redundant systems as work continues. Decisions governing upkeep of systems that await demolition balance the risk of running to failure against the cost benefit of maintenance and repair. This is further complicated as regulators and safety professionals are often unfamiliar with these new conditions and continue to view facility work activities and potential upset conditions from a nuclear operations perspective. The results of this paper evaluate the differences in how regulatory, safety basis, and operational practices must adapt to the dynamic environment of decontamination and decommissioning in contrast to the relatively constant environment of traditional nuclear operations. Based on these differences, this paper documents a set of recommendations that can be used to support safe and efficient transition from nuclear operation (or other post-operational condition) to decommissioning activities. The benefit of developing uniform guidance and practices based on lessons learned from previous DOE nuclear facility closure activities should reduce ambiguity in how to proceed, and lead to improved safety and efficiency of nuclear facility closure. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21160743
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP'04: 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants, Pittsburgh, PA (United States), 13-17 Jun 2004; Other Information: Country of input: France; 4 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2004 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'04, 2338 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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