KENNEWICK — Energy Northwest will receive a second white finding for an incident in May 2021 that unexpectedly and significantly exposed workers to radiation, it was told at a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The additional white finding is related to inadequate checks of workers who inhaled radioactive particles, preventing Energy Northwest from correctly assessing their internal dose of radiation, according to NRC documents.
A white finding is for issues of low to moderate safety significance and can lead to additional NRC inspections to make sure issues have been corrected.
Maintenance and repairs were being done May 28, 2021, at the Columbia Generating Station, the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant, while the Eastern Washington plant was shut down for a refueling outage.
During the work, radioactive particles became airborne and were inhaled. Two of the workers in the room, both pipefitters, received the most exposure.
The NRC learned new information about the incident as a result of a public regulatory conference with Energy Northwest in spring 2022 on the initial white finding. That led to a further investigation into how Energy Northwest checked for the exposure to 22 workers.
One of the pipefitters, Shannon Buck Phillips, spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“We are pleased that, after Mr. Phillips challenged the facts provided by the NRC last year, the NRC investigated and confirmed that the accident was far more serious than initially reported,” said Billie Garde, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Phillips and the second pipefitter.
Both were exposed to much higher doses of radiation than they were told at the time, including radiation from plutonium, she said.
One of the pipefitters sets off radiation portals when he enters nuclear plants to work there, and the other is unable to work, Garde said.
Energy Northwest: Follow up incomplete
Energy Northwest failed in the 2021 incident to take timely measurements of airborne concentrations of radioactive materials in work areas, to collect as many urine and fecal samples as were needed to provide good test results and to evaluate certain isotopes in workers’ bodies, including plutonium, according to a June NRC report.
“These failures resulted in an inability for the licensee (Energy Northwest) to properly assess the dose accrued by the pipefitters,” the report said.
The initial white finding was related to Energy Northwest’s failure to provide adequate radiological controls for the work that resulted in worker exposure.
“The entire Energy Northwest leadership team takes this situation very seriously,” said Bob Schuetz, chief executive officer of Energy Northwest in Richland.
“We failed to protect workers from unplanned radiation exposure during our refueling outage in 2021, and then did not appropriately perform follow ups. We are disappointed with the actions that led to theses findings, and they do not reflect our core value of safety first.”
According to the initial NRC account of the incident, radiation workers and pipefitters on the night shift May 28, 2021, were preparing for welding on piping of the highly contaminated reactor water cleanup heat exchanger.
After the pre-job briefing, a radiation protection technician was unable to get on the work platform attached to scaffolding and left to find another technician to fill in. The technician who filled in had not attended the briefing and arrived after workers already were cutting into a pipe.
The work on the pipe, including grinding, required using an enclosure glove bag to contain any radioactive particles that might become airborne.
But workers used the wrong glove bag inlet attachment, and the glove bag collapsed when a vacuum system was turned on. Workers turned off the vacuum system, which allowed airborne radioactivity to collect and escape when the glove bag was removed, according to the inspection report.
Radiation reading ‘off scale’
Garde said work was only stopped after the two pipefitters finished the work and left the area, where they set off alarms.
The NRC said their initial radiation reading “went off-scale high.”
After multiple showers and scans on the personnel contamination monitors, Energy Northwest confirmed they had internal uptakes.
The two workers were sent to initiate the whole-body count process, with initial counts confirming they had inhaled or ingested cobalt 58 and cobalt 60 radionuclides.
However, there was indication from checking the pipe that was cut that plutonium 239 and plutonium 240 contamination was possible in the incident, but that information was not used to assess workers.
Energy Northwest’s procedures for internal dose assessment were incomplete, failed to provide clear directions and did not fully address all radionuclides that could have contaminated the workers, according to the NRC report.
Dose is a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed that accounts for the type of radiation and its effects on particular organs.
The two pipefitters had their urine tested only once and no fecal samples were collected.
“In conclusion, not only did the licensee (Energy Northwest) fail to implement the most appropriate sampling methods to detect the level of hard-to-detect radionuclides from the intake, including alpha emitters, but they did not take any additional samples to suitably establish trends and elimination rates of these radionuclides,” according to an NRC inspection report.
Plutonium is an alpha emitter.
Energy Northwest also failed to effectively take air samples in the workers’ breathing space during the incident, the NRC said.
Energy Northwest plans review
Not only were procedures inadequate, but Energy Northwest did not have the equipment or personnel available to address the level of contamination and assess the dose within workers bodies, according to an NRC report.
Energy Northwest is bringing in an external expert to review its cause evaluations of the incident and assist in a new evaluation to cover the violations from both white findings, said Bob Schuetz, Energy Northwest chief executive.
“We will then identify actions to ensure that this never happens again, including updating procedures and targeting key behaviors so that we can return Columbia Generating Station to top industry performance,” he said.
Energy Northwest said it met with the NRC on Thursday when it was told there would be a second white finding and expects a final determination letter from NRC by the end of the month.
Garde had not received information about the NRC determination, but remains concerned that the NRC’s lengthy process provides no impetus for Energy Northwest to help the workers affected or even to provide additional testing as she has requested, she said.
“We agree with the NRC’s findings, but they do not go far enough,” she said.
