Oak Ridge Today

Y-12 Construction hits one million hour mark without lost-time injury

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Y-12 Construction Safety Milestone

Jim Haynes, deputy general manager of projects at Y-12 National Security Complex, congratulates construction workers during a celebration luncheon Thursday. (Photo submitted by B&W Y-12)

B&W Y-12 announced last week that its direct-hire construction team has worked one million hours without a lost-time injury.

A press release said some 285 people—including building trade crafts, non-manual staff, and escorts—worked without a lost-time accident during the 633-day period. The construction team’s last lost workday was in September 2010.

Senior leaders from the National Nuclear Security Administration Production Office, or NPO, and B&W Y‑12 congratulated the workers during a celebration Thursday.

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Oak Ridge partnership merges strengths of lab, private sector

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An Oak Ridge engineering services firm with an international footprint has teamed with three Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists to form a subsidiary and market an award-winning text analysis system.

The subsidiary, Global Security Information Analysts LLC, is the product of Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve) and the inventors of Piranha, which is software used by the military and U.S. Department of Homeland Security to analyze large sets of streaming data.

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Y-12 camera didn’t work, hammering trespassers mistaken for maintenance

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Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility

Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (Photo courtesy of NNSA/B&W Y-12)

Note: This story was last updated at 10:40 p.m.

A special federal report published Wednesday documents alleged failures that allowed three anti-nuclear weapons activists to sneak into the Y-12 National Security Complex on July 28, penetrate a high-security area, and spray-paint slogans and splash human blood on a building that stores bomb-grade uranium.

Among the findings: A critical security camera in an area penetrated by the protesters hadn’t worked for about six months, and guards assumed the trespassers were maintenance workers when they used hammers to beat on the walls of the uranium storage building, officially known as the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility.

The failures in the $150 million security system at Y-12, which has “long enjoyed a reputation as one of the most secure facilities in the United States,” raised serious questions, said the 18-page report by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General.

“We identified troubling displays of ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical security equipment, over-reliance on compensatory measures, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management,” said the report, signed by Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman.

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IG report finds ‘multiple system failures’ at Y-12, inept alarm responses

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The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General has released a report on the July 28 security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex, and it found “multiple system failures on several levels,” including ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical security equipment, misunderstanding of security protocols, and poor communications.

There was also an over-reliance on “compensatory measures,” and weaknesses in contract and resource management, said the 18-page report, released about one month after the security breach. In addition, “contractor governance and federal oversight failed to identify and correct early indicators of these multiple system breakdowns.

“When combined, these issues directly contributed to an atmosphere in which the trespassers could gain access to the protected security area directly adjacent to one of the nation’s most critically important and highly secured weapons-related facilities,” according to a summary of the report posted on the OIG website.

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Bauer named head of Y-12 Facilities, Infrastructure, and Services

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Linda Bauer

Linda Bauer

B&W Y-12 President and General Manager Chuck Spencer has named Linda Bauer as vice president of Facilities, Infrastructure, and Services, or FI&S.

Bauer most recently served as senior vice president with Los Alamos Technical Associates Inc., helping direct large-scale government and private endeavors, such as the Portsmouth Environmental Restoration Project and the Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Conversion Project.

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ETTP security staff cut by 15 employees

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The plan to cut security staff at the Y-12 National Security Complex has been canceled, but the proposal to cut staff at the East Tennessee Technology Park has not, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Courtney Russell Henry, public affairs manager for security contractor WSI Oak Ridge, said 15 employees at ETTP have left the company, including 13 security police officers and one support staff member who accepted a voluntary separation. One officer left the company outside the voluntary separation program, or VSP, Henry said.

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Y-12 protesters ask federal judge to delay Oct. 10 trial

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Megan Rice and Michael R. Walli

Anti-nuclear weapons activists Megan Rice and Michael R. Walli leave U.S. District Court in Knoxville after an Aug. 9 arraignment on charges of trespassing, property depredation, and property destruction at the Y-12 National Security Complex. A third protester, Greg Boertje-Obed, remains jailed in Blount County.

Two anti-nuclear weapons activists arrested in July in a high-security area at the Y-12 National Security Complex have asked a federal judge to delay their trial date.

The protesters now face an Oct. 10 trial before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas W. Phillips in Knoxville.

But in motions filed Wednesday, two of the protesters—Greg Boertje-Obed and Megan Rice—said the evidence in the case is voluminous, and it involves significant and complex issues, including national security and First Amendment issues.

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Officials cancel plan to cut guards at Y-12

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A plan to cut up to 34 guard positions at the Y-12 National Security Complex has been canceled, a federal spokesman said Tuesday.

WSI Oak Ridge, which provides security at Y-12, no longer has the authority to restructure its staff since it is now a subcontractor reporting to B&W Y-12, rather than the National Nuclear Security Administration, said Steven Wyatt, public affairs manager for the NNSA Production Office in Oak Ridge. That change in reporting authority followed an unprecedented July 28 security breach at the plant, the nation’s main production facility for many nuclear weapons components.

The WSI plan had called for cutting a total of up to 52 jobs at Y-12 and the East Tennessee Technology Park. Employees were to be offered voluntary separations, and today was supposed to be the last work day for those who were accepted.

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ORNL researchers probe invisible vacancies in fuel cell materials

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Knowing the position of missing oxygen atoms could be the key to cheaper solid oxide fuel cells with longer lifetimes. New microscopy research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is enabling scientists to map these vacancies at an atomic scale.

Although fuel cells hold promise as an efficient energy conversion technology, they have yet to reach mainstream markets because of their high price tag and limited lifespans. Overcoming these barriers requires a fundamental understanding of fuel cells, which produce electricity through a chemical reaction between oxygen and a fuel.

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ORNL technology moves scientists closer to extracting uranium from seawater

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Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The combination of ORNL’s high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company’s high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively, and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today’s best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms, or ions.

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B&W awards college scholarship to local student

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Rob Jones

Rob Jones

The Babcock and Wilcox Company has awarded Knoxville student Rob Jones a college scholarship worth $1,500 per year for up to four years, a press release said.

The scholarship is one of 12 awarded each year to students whose parents work in B&W’s offices, including sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Ontario, Canada, the release said.

Jones is the son of Kelley and Steve Jones. Steve is a geologist in the Environmental Compliance organization at the Y-12 National Security Complex. B&W is one of the parent companies of B&W Y-12, the company that operates Y-12.

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ORNL researchers improve soil carbon cycling models

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Carbon Cycling Model

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new carbon cycling model could help scientists understand the role of soil in climate change by tracking the microbial processes that break down carbon-rich materials. (Graphic submitted by ORNL)

A new model developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helps scientists understand the role that soil will play in future climate change, a press release said.

Predicting climate change depends heavily on the cycling of carbon dioxide, which is found in four main reservoirs: the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans, and soil, the release said.

ORNL’s model was designed to replace traditional soil carbon cycling models. The press release said it better accounts for the carbon dioxide-releasing activity of microbes in the ground.

“Soil is a big reservoir of carbon,” said co-author Melanie Mayes of ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division. “And most of the soil carbon cycling models in use today are so vastly simplified that they ignore the fact that decomposition is actually performed by microbes.”

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