DOE OSTI2017
Hanford's 242-A Evaporator has had the mission of reducing waste volume in the Hanford Tank Farms since the late 1970's. Until 2014, the Documented Safety Analysis for the 242-A facility considered protection and controls of the collocated worker (workers outside the facility) and the public. In 2010, Tank Farms Nuclear Safety engineers initiated a significant revision of the Documented Safety Analysis to implement DOE-STD-3009, Change Notice 3, which requires the protection of the facility worker in addition to the collocated worker and public. Through the use of an extensive process hazards analysis performed on the facility, it was concluded that it was essential to control conditions in the primary evaporation vessel (C-A-1) such that flammable gasses could not build up to the Lower Flammability Limit, and that another control was necessary to ensure that the C-A-1 vessel could not overflow. Early control decision meetings held during the development of the Documented Safety Analysis revision yielded no simple solution to the protection of workers from a flammable gas deflagration. Controls selected for the waste overflow accident were all mitigative in nature (i.e. the detection of a waste overflow after it already happened). Engineering could not replace the mitigative controls with preventive controls without attempting to credit some of the existing facility interlocks associated with the C-A-1 vessel operations. Software and hard-wired interlocks had been used at the facility to prevent overheating of the waste and overfilling of the C-A-1 vessel. These interlocks were considered useful to the prevention of the flammable gas deflagration and vessel overfilling accidents, but lacked the pedigree and reliability necessary to credit the interlocks as safety significant. It was at this stage of the Documented Safety Analysis control decision and control development that engineering became aware of the DOE's acceptance of the ISA-84 instrumented system standard. It became apparent that the ideal solution was not to attempt to credit existing interlock systems, but to develop a new system of 'safety interlocks' to the ISA-84 standard. A meeting was held with upper management of both engineering and operations to propose the use of safety instrumented systems at the 242-A facility. URS Corporation (now AECOM), who had recently supported the Savanah River site in developing ISA-84 controls, was consulted to support the development of two new instrumented systems for the 242-A facility. In addition to the use of the newly adopted ISA-84 standard, the failure modes and effect analysis process was implemented in a very effective manner to support the development of the new safety instrumented systems. Through a brand new methodology, and through a very dedicated and hard-working engineering, projects, and operations team, the new controls were designed, built, tested, and commissioned. At this time, five successful waste reduction campaigns have been performed at the facility with the new safety instrumented systems. During these waste processing campaigns, trips and spurious trips of the SIS have occurred - all of which acted properly. (authors)
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗