Department of Energy June 11, 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announces the availability of a Report on the Secretary of Energy's Final Decision and Supporting Reasoning Regarding Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Recommendation 2019-2, Safety of the Savannah River Site Tritium Facilities. The Board issued Recommendation 2019-2 on June 11, 2019. The Recommendation focused on the Department of Energy (DOE) actions to improve the safety of the Tritium Facilities, upgrades to safety management programs, and the implementation of robust controls to prevent very high radiation doses, creating the potential for acute radiation sickness or fatality in a significant number of individuals. The Recommendation identified three specific sub-recommendations.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to amend the test procedure for room air conditioners (``room ACs'') to address updates to the industry standards that are incorporated by reference, provide for the testing of variable-speed room ACs to better reflect their relative efficiency gains at lower outdoor temperatures as compared to single-speed room ACs, and to provide specifications and minor corrections that would improve repeatability, reproducibility, and overall readability of the test procedure. Because there are no testing modifications proposed for single-speed room ACs, DOE expects that the proposed changes will not affect the measured energy use for these models. For variable-speed room ACs, the proposed changes will improve the representativeness of the measured energy use of these models. As part of this proposal, DOE is announcing a public meeting to collect comments and data on its proposal.