DOE Delays Restart of Plutonium Production

The U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday it will not restart plutonium production at its Hanford facilities until at least January because it has found “substantial evidence” of a breakdown in safeguards against the theft of nuclear materials from the two top-secret plants near here.

Although there is no evidence that plutonium has actually been stolen or otherwise diverted, the DOE said flaws in safety and security controls are serious enough to keep the plants closed until the problems are corrected.

The two plants, operated for the DOE by Rockwell International Corp., provide a major share of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, and their closure will mean a 25% reduction in planned plutonium production during the current fiscal year, the DOE said.

The seven-week review by the DOE substantiated Rockwell internal audits that led to the closure of the plants last Oct. 8. The Rockwell audits revealed serious lapses in controls intended to prevent the theft or diversion of nuclear materials and to assure safe operations. Until the audits were leaked to the press in October, the DOE had not been aware of them.

“The review team concluded that the new deficiencies identified in the (Rockwell) follow-up audit and the lack of effective implementation of corrective action to the original audit findings provide substantial evidence of a serious lack of overall special nuclear materials control,” the DOE review said.

Outdated Diagrams

In addition, the review team discovered problems on its own--the most serious being out-of-date diagrams for key instruments and electrical wiring. The team said the outdated diagrams could lead to mistakes that might result in a nuclear accident.

At the same time, however, the DOE’s review found that operations at the two plants did not threaten public safety.

On Tuesday, Michael J. Lawrence, the DOE’s top-ranking official here, said the plants will remain closed until at least next year. “There is much more involved, some underlying things we need to get to the bottom of,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence also stressed that the primary responsibility for quality assurance and safety rests on supervisors who are on the scene.

In the immediate aftermath of the disclosures last month, Rockwell fired three middle-level managers, demoted one plant manager and his assistant, and reassigned a sixth person.

In a lengthy report released Tuesday, the DOE review team concluded that two key internal audits by Rockwell auditor Casey Ruud were accurate and that Rockwell should have shut down operations based on the findings.

Instead, Rockwell management kept the plants open, even though at one point A. Clegg Crawford, assistant general manager, sent a strongly worded memorandum to other company officials saying that he was “mad as hell” over the nuclear material management issues raised by the audit and was “furious” that Rockwell was not following its own procedures.

Ruud--who served as an adviser to the DOE review team--refused to sign its report and publicly challenged the DOE’s contention that the two plants are safe.

Ruud said that although the report was “essentially accurate for what it said,” it failed to call for an independent review of the plant designs and DOE and Rockwell management systems.

“Without full, independent investigation of the system design deficiencies, it is, in my opinion, inappropriate to consider that these plants are safe,” Ruud told reporters. He withheld further comment, saying that he expects to testify in detail before a congressional committee next year.

One source close to the inquiry said that Ruud had been “pressured” to sign the report in order to give it more credibility.

Ruud also complained that Rockwell had been allowed to review the report and make factual corrections.

Didn’t Alter Findings

However, Michael S. Karol, the DOE’s team leader, told reporters that Rockwell’s observations did not constitute “editing” of the contents or alter the report’s tone or findings.

“I think it was a good report. I know it was a good report, and I personally stand by the results,” Karol said.

Rockwell spokesman Jerry Gilliland said Tuesday that the company believes that the findings of the DOE review team “factually represented Rockwell’s own audits.”

“We intend to be fully responsive to the concerns expressed in the report,” Gilliland said. He added that some improvements have already been made.

Among other findings, the Ruud audits said that at times containers of plutonium-bearing liquid had not been affixed with seals that would indicate that the container had been tampered with. The seals are an integral part of efforts to prevent the theft or unauthorized use of the material.

Sept. 29 Incident

In other cases, unauthorized personnel had access to the seals, and some seals were placed on containers without being witnessed by a second worker.

The event that triggered the shutdown, however, was an incident last Sept. 29, when a key safety measure intended to prevent plutonium liquid from going “critical” was not taken. When a highly concentrated plutonium solution was transferred from one holding tank to another, a pipe linking the second and third tanks should have been disconnected. It was not, but six closed valves provided a margin of safety, preventing the liquid from entering the third tank.

If the valves had been open and the concentrated plutonium solution had entered the third tank, the liquid would have gone “critical,” the point at which a nuclear chain reaction takes place. Such a sudden reaction could have exposed workers to intense heat and lethal doses of radiation.

The Sept. 29 episode was one of 54 “critical” incidents here in the last two years.

Located on Nuclear Reservation

The two plants are on the government’s 570-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington, 30 miles north of here. The reservation, almost solely devoted to the nation’s weapons program, is also the site of the aging N reactor, which is still in operation. The reactor’s irradiated fuel rods are transported to the two plants that are now closed: the plutonium-uranium extraction plant, known as the “PUREX” plant, and the plutonium finishing plant.

Over the years, the Energy Department’s operations have come under sustained criticism from members of Congress, environmentalists and others, who have said that the operations should be reviewed by an independent, outside agency.

Unlike commercial nuclear power plants, which are licensed and scrutinized by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Department serves as its own watchdog on the nuclear facilities it operates.