The Nuclear Weapons Complex Management for Health, Safety, and the Environment (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-7
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The facilities, which together are termed the "weapons complex," include laboratories that design and test the weapons and components; materials production facilities that produce plutonium, tritium, and other special materials for use in weapons; and weapons production facilities that either produce various components or assemble them into completed weapons, or both. This report, which was requested of the National Research Council by DOE at the direction of Congress, sets out an assessment of various management, environmental, health, and safety issues relating to the operation of the complex.
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Perhaps largely as a result of history, DOE has maintained a management structure with varying and complicated reporting lines. For example, most of the offices that provide day-t~day direction to the contractors report to the Undersecretary, even though the Assistant Secretary of Defense Programs is designated as the principal DOE official with days day responsibility for the complex.
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The responsibility for safe operations must reside with line management the role of an internal oversight staff must not be to supplant or undermine Hat authority but, rather, to assure that controversial or questionable decisions affecting safety, health, or the environment at a given level of line management are brought to the next level of line management for reexamination. Such a system of dynamic oversight can provide independent expertise and an important element of redundancy in assuring safe operations.
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Although such an approach provides assurance that a certain risk level will never be exceeded, it sets up standards that are likely to be overly protective ir most circumstances and, hence, not cost effective. We therefore advocate that the determination of specific goals for cleanup activities at a given site should be guided by the assessment of risk at that site, using consistent risk assessment methodologies throughout the complex.
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Waste minimization principles should be applied across the complex. Process modifications to minimize waste generation often require significant front-end capital investment, but they can be cost effective in the long term by reducing overall waste management expenses.
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DOE should assure that there is collaboration in all these matters involving medical expertise, and that the medical department in DOE headquarters is given sufficient resources to administer, monitor, and effect changes in these programs. In addition to improving the protection programs, it is essential to monitor workers to assess the effectiveness of the programs, to identify opportunities for improvement, and to allow for timely medical intervention.
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At the request of Congress, DOE prepamd a report on the modernization of the complex that placed a high priority on the refurbishment of the plutonium recovery capacity in Building 371 at the Rocky Flats Plant and in the construction of a special isotope separation (SIS) facility for separating weapons-grade plutonium from spent reactor fuel at the Idaho National Engineering I~bomory.
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