There is an ongoing staff review to determine if the facility requires emergency backup power and, therefore, requires an additional diesel generator and design upgrades. The TA-55 utility control system, which monitors and partially controls the power distribution, ventilation, and radiological monitoring systems, is over 15 years old and fails frequently. The facility is upgrading the system with programmable logic controllers that will provide reliable utility monitoring and control capabilities. This project is scheduled to be completed in 1996. Configuration management at LANL is only a few years old and a significant learning process is still underway.
Facility managers define the practices and procedures for their own facilities.
At the CMR facility, the change control procedure applies only to the current Phase 1 electrical upgrade activities. There is a need to considerably strengthen the configuration management program prior to Phase 2 upgrade activities. At TA- 55 twenty design change packages are in progress under the configuration management control procedure and only one package has been completed. The CMR change control procedure was issued in December 1994 based on the change control procedure developed for TA-55 and applied to the Phase 1 electrical system upgrades currently in progress. This plan includes an operational program and an adjunct design basis reconstitution activity.