Memo About Reactor Hazards Misunderstood, Engineer Says

An Energy Department reactor engineer says a watchdog group misunderstood his memo summarizing concerns about using a Hanford Nuclear Reservation reactor to make tritium for nuclear weapons.

The July memo from William Kelly was released in Seattle on Tuesday by the private Government Accountability Project. The group contends the memo indicates the Fast Flux Test Reactor at Hanford could “explode like a bomb” if its core is reconfigured for tritium production.

Kelly issued a statement late Tuesday saying his memo had been misconstrued.

“Nothing in any of the comments indicated that the reactor could ‘explode,”’ the statement said. “The comments did not state that the plant would be unsafe, and only pointed out that there were several areas where considerable work would need to be done to demonstrate that the safety parameters were maintained.”

The Government Accountability Project stands by its interpretation, spokeswoman Dana Gold said Wednesday. The project assists Hanford “downwinders” seeking compensation for alleged damage from nuclear releases.

The Energy Department has been considering a plan to reopen the fast-flux reactor to make tritium, a perishable form of radioactive hydrogen gas that enhances nuclear explosions. The gas must be replaced every few years, and the Energy Department now has no way to produce it.

Kelly’s memo summarized statements by nine Energy Department advisers who appeared to warn that the reactor would be more accident-prone if adapted to produce tritium at a rapid rate.

On Tuesday, Kelly said the memo used calculations based on worst-case scenarios. And Dave Lucoff, manager of nuclear-safety compliance for Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc., Hanford’s largest contractor, said “explosion” was too strong a word.

If all the plant’s safety systems somehow failed at the same time, a runaway power surge could “cause the core to disassemble,” he said.

“What this means is that the core gets hot enough that some of the fuel pins fail because they just overheat. And fuel is normally expelled from the core in that condition,” Lucoff said in an interview with The Oregonian newspaper in Portland.

“It’s still inside containment, it doesn’t affect the public, but it pretty much ruins the reactor.”

Lucoff said the Energy Department learned several months ago that the reactor would lose much of its inherent stability if more than about a dozen of its approximately 85 fuel assemblies are replaced with lithium targets for making tritium.

But Terry Lash, director of the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, said the agency would “carefully address that question and allow adequate time for the public to review our work” before proposing restarting the reactor.

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