Safeguards and Security Transition Plan for a Closure Site

Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (Site) is a former nuclear weapons production plant that now has a closure mission with an accelerated closure schedule. Closure not only involves cleaning up legacy contamination and demolishing buildings but also involves reduction and elimination of a complex programmatic infrastructure, which includes all of the Safeguards and Security (S&S) program elements at the Site. As security interests are lessened at the Site commensurate with the removal of targets, the implementation of the S&S program changes. To ensure a smooth transition during this dynamic time, Kaiser-Hill LLC (K-H) developed and is implementing a project management type of transition plan. This transition plan is divided into phases to enhance the management of all the activities that must be performed to smoothly eliminate or transition the duties and responsibilities of the S&S organization through closure. This approach focused initial planning activities on those functions that would be eliminated or transitioned first in the progress of the closure project rather than trying to plan the entire program transition at once. There are four main phases, with Phase I mainly dealing with the removal of Category I and II Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) and with the final Phase IV dealing with final elimination of remaining S&S programmatic functions. Each phase has a separate plan and numerous checklists. In order to be considered complete, not only must the activity be complete but supporting documentation and activities, such as procedures, manuals, and training must also be dispositioned. This extensive planning effort proved invaluable during preparations for and after removal of all of the Category I and II SNM from the site in the summer of 2003. It is intended that the completed checklists and the associated objective evidence supporting completion of each checklist action will be used to support the Department of Energy (DOE) S&S Termination Survey. This paper describes the development strategy behind the transition plan and the various components of the plan.