[DOE LETTERHEAD]

August 14, 2002

The Honorable John T. Conway
Chairman
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
625 Indiana Avenue, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20004-2901

Dear Mr. Chairman:

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of the actions taken to address the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff observations of the electrical and instrument and control systems at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant.

The Richland Operations Office (RL) has prepared, and is currently implementing, a corrective action plan (CAP) to address the DNFSB staff observations, which is enclosed for your information. While many of the corrective actions contained in the CAP are completed, there are several corrective actions that have not been completed as scheduled. The current status of these corrective actions is as follows:

• 1.1 Procedure will be finalized by August 30, 2002;
• 1.2 Hanford Site Operations will finalize procedure by August 30, 2002;
• 4.1 The electrical load study should be completed ahead of schedule on September 30, 2002;
• 8.2 Delay in retrieving archived engineering files has pushed the completion date to November 29, 2002;
• 8.3 Delay in corrective action 8.2 will extend completion to 12/3l/02; and,
• 10.1 Briefing of back shift personnel will be completed by August 15, 2002.

The Richland Operations Office will perform an assessment to fully verify completion of all corrective actions and to verify that performance has been improved, and will inform me of the results by January 1, 2003.

If you have any questions, please contact me at (202) 586-7709.

Jessie Hill Roberson
Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management

Enclosure

cc:
K. Klein, RL
M. Whitaker, S-3.1