New safety crackdown at Hanford
Two serious safety mishaps in August 1993 at the US Dept. of Energy's Hanford nuclear weapon complex in Washington state have again called the site's cleanup safety management into question. The latest incident, which shut down all nonessential work at Hanford's huge waste tank farm and has already sparked a site management shakeup, came as site officials held a conference at the complex to tout its environmental technology potential. In an unusual move, site management contractor Westinghouse Hanford Co. ordered the work stoppage on Aug. 12. It will affect at least 350 workers. The shutdown came two days after a worker employed by site engineer-contractor Kaiser Engineers Hanford Co. taped a rock to a rope and dropped it into a pipe in a high-level radioactive waste tank to determine if it was plugged. The breach of procedure was aggravated when he held the rock after withdrawing it from the tank, and was contaminated. Just days earlier, a Westinghouse employee accidentally turned on a test pump inserted into Hanford's so-called [open quotes]burping tank[close quotes] last month to stir and diffuse potentially explosive hydrogen gas. The brief accident did no immediate harm, according to officials.
- OSTI ID:
- 5571317
- Journal Information:
- Engineering News-Record; (United States), Journal Name: Engineering News-Record; (United States) Vol. 231:8; ISSN 0013-807X; ISSN ENREAU
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Hanford struggles with transition. [Forum on future of DOE weapons site]
Independent technical review of the Hanford Tank Farm Operations
Related Subjects
055000* -- Nuclear Fuels-- Safeguards
Inspection
& Accountability
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ACCIDENTS
CONTRACTORS
DOSES
HANFORD RESERVATION
MANAGEMENT
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
RADIATION DOSES
RADIATION PROTECTION
RADIOACTIVE WASTE FACILITIES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
SAFETY
US DOE
US ERDA
US ORGANIZATIONS
WASTE MANAGEMENT