DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD

April 18, 1997

Consolidated Incinerator Facility (CIF) Trial Burn - All internal and external readiness reviews have been completed and CIF is presently conducting Trial Burns. Representatives from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control are observing the Trial Burns which consist of monitoring stack emissions during three conditions: high temperature, low temperature / high liquid feed rate, and low temperature / high box feed rate. After successful completion of the Trial Burn, scheduled to end April 20, the Consolidated Incinerator Facility will be ready to begin incinerating low level radioactive waste and mixed waste.

Implementation of Recommendation 93-3 - DOE-SR has identified 159 employees for qualification under the Technical Qualification Program by May 1998. SRS has set a site goal to complete these qualifications by December 1997. One nuclear safety systems engineer and 28 facility representatives, for a total of 29 employees (18%), have completed their qualifications. About 50 to 70% of the individual qualification-card signatures have been completed. although some programmatic assessments have been made of the Technical Qualification Program at SRS, no assessments have been conducted to determine the effectiveness of the training. As more employees complete their qualifications, a determination of effectiveness would be appropriate.

In addition to the 159 employees above, an additional 42 employees (26 senior technical safety managers and 16 project managers) have been identified for qualification by December 1998.

ITP Ventilation Occurrences - On April 9th the Tank 48 normal purge ventilation system isokinetic sampler flow velocity was found to be out of tolerance. While trying to diagnose this condition on the local control display, the normal purge ventilation system tripped off-line. ITP personnel still do not understand the reason for the trip and have contacted the vendor.

In an unrelated event the following day, a subcontractor was calibrating a stack exhaust flow element. The measured value was out-of-specification, which required declaring the flow monitor inoperable and entering a Limiting Condition of Operation (LCO). However, the subcontractor declared the reading acceptable. The error was not detected until the following day, at which time the LCO was entered. Corrective actions include (1) reviewing subcontract personnel qualifications and (2) requiring that a subcontractor supervisor review the calibration results.