[DOE LETTERHEAD]
National
Nuclear Security Administration
September 16, 2005
The Honorable A. J. Eggenberger
Chairman
Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board
625 Indiana Avenue, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20004-2901
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Your March 8, 2005, letter
requested a report from NNSA on the path forward for resumption of programmatic
operations in the Plutonium Facility (B332) at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL). Your letter indicated
that the Board was concerned that the approach being taken by the Livermore
Site Office (LSO) to resolve identified deficiencies and resume nuclear
operations did not adequately address the safety issues raised by noted
violations of Technical Safety Requirements (TSR) and deficiencies in safety system
analysis.
The enclosed report from LSO has
been prepared in response to each specific concern cited in your March 8, 2005,
letter. Since the January 15, 2005,
programmatic stand-down at B332, NNSA has noted significant progress
addressing B332 safety issues, and a number of important actions have been
taken by LLNL and LSO. Compensatory measures
to assure safety have been developed for areas such as radiation protection, procedures,
the Unreviewed Safety Question (USQ) Program, configuration management,
maintenance, quality assurance, and occurrence reporting. LSO approved LLNL’s Corrective Action Plan for
issues arising out of the Office of Independent Oversight (OA-40) review on
April 20, 2005. LLNL has submitted the
Technical Safety Requirement Recovery Plans for the TSR violations for LSO
review, including the Recovery Plan for the Fire Protection Program. LSO identified additional actions to supplement
the recovery plans and has directed LLNL to include all recovery actions in the
B332 Safety Basis. LSO and LLNL have
conducted joint reviews of all the Vital Safety Systems in B332 to assess
current corrective action progress, system condition, and configuration
management and operability, and have concluded that all of the systems are
operable.
LSO and LLNL plan to resume
interim level and full operations in accordance with the requirements and
procedures in the site specific documents implementing DOE O 425.1C. The stand-up to limited programmatic
operations will be approved when the confirmation of readiness has been
completed. LLNL and LSO are working to develop
a path forward for resumption of full operations. LSO will provide the details of this path
forward to your staff as it is developed.
If you have any questions,
please contact me or have your staff contact Mike Thompson at 301-903-5648 or
Sam Brinker, LSO at 925-422-0710.
Sincerely,
Linton F. Brooks
Administrator
cc: C. Yuan-Soo Hoo, LSO Manager
M.
Whitaker, DR-1