NRC cites safety violation at B&W

By Ray Reed

Published: May 16, 2008

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a notice of violation of safety procedures to Babcock & Wilcox Co. after an employee was splashed with a solution containing nuclear material in January.

The employee went through first-aid procedures and lost some personal effects that became contaminated with the material, according to information posted on the NRC Web site.

The federal commission said the splashing amounted to “a Severity Level IV violation,” an event serious enough to be cited in the lowest category of the NRC’s four levels of violations.

The company has not been fined by NRC and and “the incident did not result in a lost-time recordable incident,” said B&W spokeswoman Amy Carter. Confidentiality rules prevented release of any further information involving the employee, Carter said.

The incident occurred during the NRC’s January-through-March inspection of the plant and its operations on Mount Athos Road in Campbell County.  The NRC issued its notice of violation on April 21, and B&W had 30 days to decide whether to contest the notice. “A decision has not been made,” Carter said.

“Corrective actions were implemented immediately following this event,” Carter said, and the NRC report said the B&W work area operated safely after its procedures were resumed.

According to the report, the splashing occurred this way:

An operator in training on a system in the uranium recovery area was splashed on the forehead and legs with a solution of nuclear material while adding nitric acid into a system of pipes and containers.

The operator, who was working under the supervision of a qualified uranium recovery operator, “did not close or verify closed all of the outlet valves necessary to isolate” the container where the acid was being added.

“As a result, when the operator opened the outlet valve on the chemical addition vessel, special nuclear material-bearing/nitric acid solution at a higher hydrostatic pressure from one of the feed vessels overflowed the chemical addition vessel at a siphon break onto the operator and the floor,” the NRC report said.

“The operator received adequate first aid treatment following the incident and lost some of his personal effects due to radioactive contamination,” the report continued.

NRC inspectors reviewed the B&W instructions for the work procedure and “determined that the procedure contained inadequate written steps for valve lineups during chemical additions to prevent an overflow and spill of special nuclear material-bearing solution.”

The inadequate written steps were the basis for the violation cited by the NRC, according to the report.