A Savannah River Site employee suffered a puncture to the hand earlier this year but only required first aid treatment. The employee suffered tritium exposure, but officials said it was well below radiation limits.
In a recent report, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wrote that Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the site's management and operations contractor, released a thorough report on the January incident.
The Aiken Standard reached out to the contractor and learned that the employee received the puncture wound after a glovebox slip-up. He was working in a glovebox in the Tritium Facilities and was using an "O-ring extraction tool" - a slender metal stylus, with a shape similar to the tool used in a dental practice - and suffered the injury while removing a degraded gasket from a metal process component.
According to Angie French, a National Nuclear Safety Administration spokeswoman with SRNS, the injury required first aid treatment. SRNS performed bioassay - which identifies and quantifies internal dose - to determine tritium exposure to employees.
"The analysis showed that the dose to the one affected employee was well below any applicable regulatory or company radiation exposure limits/guides," French wrote. "This dose would not result in any effect on the health or well-being of the worker."
The defense board cited several reasons for the incident, including: lack of a tool control/sharps program, incomplete execution of the assisted hazards analysis, or AHA, program and noncompliant disciplined operations.
The board made several suggestions, which SRNS is in the process of implementing. These include a formalized process to examine radiological work area that has the potential for cuts or puncture injuries, and reanalyzing areas needed to mitigate hazards. In addition, a new tool for removing O-rings, and a new fixture to hold the item, rather than having it held in the employee's other hand, have been designed, evaluated and shown to be effective.
French added that SRNS is undertaking actions related to Conduct of Operations training, pre-job briefings and additional AHA training specific to activities in the tritium facilities.
"A tool and sharps program is being developed and implemented that provides new and reinforcing information on such topics as: training on the safe use of hand tools, optimal tool design, personal protective equipment, engineering controls, and procedures," she wrote.
In the same report, the safety board also noted that SRNS has made progress in corrective actions following another safety incident. In early January, a brief power outage to the waste-monitoring system is blamed for knocking out the agitators in a waste holding tank, which can lead to inaccurate plutonium-concentration results, officials said.
The safety system is in the Savannah River Site's H Canyon chemical-processing facility. The failure went unnoticed for a month. SRNS spokeswoman Barbara Smoak wrote that as a result of the incident, the site's HB Line has been on a safety pause since January while officials finish corrective actions.
Some HB Line operations have been released with full operations expected to resume by early summer. No other facilities were impacted," Smoak wrote.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter with the Aiken Standard. He joined the paper in June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.