AIKEN, S.C. - The Savannah River Site (SRS) has dramatically improved the performance of its fire protection system over the past five years, with contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) reducing by more than 80 percent the number of issues that could cause fire protection or life safety operations to work incorrectly.
“Fire protection is one of the most important things we do to support the SRS infrastructure," SRNS Senior Vice President for Technical Services Rick Sprague said. “When any portion of our system has any kind of impairment, that is an unacceptable condition. We are working to drive these impairments to zero."
There are hundreds of systems on the site to control fires, from fire water supply and suppression systems to alarm and detection devices. Impairments include hydrants in need of repair.
The initiative to better address the number of outstanding issues focuses on preventative maintenance and raising awareness of the need to fix the impairments with personnel at each facility.
When the site began tracking impairments about five years ago, there were nearly 100, with a quarter of those in place for more than 180 days. After two years, the number dropped by 50 percent, with 40 to 50 being tracked at a time. Recently, there were 22 impairments, with only four outstanding for more than 180 days.
To reduce impairments, SRNS Fire Protection Engineering personnel began requiring facilities to submit to DOE corrective action plans for issues in place greater than 180 days.
“That decision has really provided a greater focus to outstanding impairments and brought everybody to the table to try and help reduce this number," Sprague said. “With this greater focus, we’ve been able to drive our impairments even lower."
Although the initiative has been a site-wide initiative, Sprague commended the efforts of the Fire System Testing & Maintenance organization.
“They shoulder the lion’s share of the effort for restoring impairments. And they have been able to meet that challenge while at the same time completing extensive regulatory required testing and outstanding corrective maintenance activities to prevent the number of impairments from increasing," he said. “And they have been able to do this while maintaining schedule efficiency greater than 90 percent."
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
