Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040389
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The troubles are cataloged in a 6-inch stack of internal documents made public by the Energy Department this week, a month after a department contractor revealed their existence by mistakenly sending copies of one report to governors' offices.
The department initially tried to keep a lid on the revelations. Failing that, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins announced he was making the reports publicly available "to show that I am serious about changing the way DOE does business."
The release of the papers, called daily operations reports and written from the department's regional field offices, marks a significant, if limited, opening in the wall of secrecy behind which the nuclear weapons industry has operated for nearly a half-century.
The weapons plants are owned by the Energy Department and operated by private contractors.
The reports, covering the period of Aug. 24, 1989, to present, describe problems ranging in seriousness from safety lapses at the Savannah River, S.C., nuclear reactors to worries about "media noise" over environmental problems at the Rocky Flats arms plant near Denver.
Much of the information was presented in a shorthand form with little or no detail, but it unveiled several episodes not previously acknowledged to the public.
Among the more serious cases:
A backup system for pumping water to cool one of the Savannah River nuclear reactors may have been unusable for the past five years because of missing wiring. Engineers discovered the problem only last December.
Significant uranium releases at the Hanford weapons plant in Washington state were not reported for several months. The reason: the releases occurred after the Energy Department standard for radiation protection was inadvertently canceled in January 1989, but before it was reinstated in July 1989.
A faulty circuit breaker started two fires in a powerhouse at Savannah River last August, forcing two nuclear materials processing operations to be shut down for several days. No one was reported injured; damage was estimated at $50,000.
Security guards at several weapons plants were dismissed or resigned after being arrested for theft of government-owned guns and other property. A guard at the Nevada Test Site, where warheads are detonated in underground tests, resigned in February after he was arrested for holding stolen property, including two rifles, one shotgun and five handguns he carried in his personal vehicle.
In April, a security guard at Savannah River was accused of sleeping on duty after a supervisor at one of the reactor buildings walked into his locked and darkened office to find the guard "getting up from the floor." A later report said that wasn't evidence enough to make the charge stick.
Illegal drug use was reported throughout the weapons complex. In one nine-day period in November, nine cases of illegal drug use were reported at five plants or laboratories. In September an operator of one of the Savannah River nuclear reactors was suspended after testing positive for unspecified drug use.
Other reports described incidents that, viewed in isolation, may have been minor, but taken together formed a pattern of violations that could lead to serious accidents in one of the most potentially hazardous working environments on Earth.
For example:
Operations involving the metal beryllium at the Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee were suspended for more than a month last fall to improve hygiene practices and tighten operating procedures and engineering controls. Exposure to airborne beryllium dust has been associated with an incurable lung disease, berylliosis.
An unspecified violation of safety limits for nuclear materials at Rocky Flats was not reported to plant managers until four days after it was discovered.
by CNB