An independent review team is investigating an explosion last month at a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, April 16).

Three workers at the U.S. Energy Department’s Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., caused an explosion and a fire April 15 while attempting to demonstrate a new uranium processing technique.

The Energy Department and plant operator BWXT have sent the review team to the plant to look into the incident, which lightly contaminated the workers and forced personnel to evacuate the building, Energy Daily reported.  The contaminated workers are healthy and the contamination did not spread outside of the building, according to Energy Daily.

The new processing method had previously succeeded, and officials were attempting to repeat those results on a larger scale.  The researchers were using depleted uranium instead of the enriched uranium used for nuclear weapons, according to Pam Horning, manager of engineering and technology at the plant.

The explosion occurred because a chemical reaction inside a uranium canister lasted longer than workers expected, creating pressure in the canister and blowing open the glovebox that housed the experiment.  A fire broke out when the uranium powder was exposed to oxygen and caught fire.

“We knew the hazards that were present from the materials (used in the test),” Horning said.  “Our investigation is going to look at … what were the processing conditions.  We have not come to a root cause.  We want to make sure we strengthen our (planning) process,” she added (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, May 22).

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