Hanford

Event: PUBLIC SCOPING PERIOD FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT FOR THE PROPOSED CONVEYANCE OF LAND AT THE HANFORD SITE

Category: Public Comment Periods

Event Date: 09/19/2012 - 10/19/2012

The U.S. Department of Energy - Richland Operation Office (DOE-RL) is preparing an Environmental Assessment (EA) to assess the potential environmental impacts of conveying approximately 1,641 acres of Hanford Site land to a local economic development organization. The term “convey” means potential transfer, lease, easement or similar actions. The land under consideration is designated for industrial uses in the Hanford Site Comprehensive Land Use Plan. The Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC), a DOE designated Community Reuse Organization and 501 (c)(6) nonprofit corporation, submitted a proposal to DOE requesting the transfer of approximately 1,641 acres of land located in the southeastern corner of the Hanford Site near the City of Richland. The TRIDEC proposal identifies possible uses of the land as warehousing and distribution; research and development; technology manufacturing; food processing and agriculture and business services. DOE invites public input on the scope of the Hanford Site Land Conveyance EA. A 30-day public scoping period will run from September 19 through October 19, 2012. A public scoping meeting will be October 10, 2012 at the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate Drive, Richland, Washington. The meeting will include an open house from 5:30-6:30 and project overview presentation at 6:30, followed by a question-and-answer period and opportunity for individuals to give formal written or oral comments.

Scoping comments may be submitted by regular mail and addressed to: Paula Call, NEPA Document Manager, U.S. Department of Energy-Richland Operations Office, P.O. Box 550, MSIN A2-15, Richland, WA 99352. Scoping comments may also be sent to landconveyanceEA@rl.doe.gov

Attachment: Notice of Intent / Draft Land Conveyance Environmental Assessment Analysis Area (PDF) / TRIDEC proposal (PDF)

DOE study looks at industrial development at Hanford

Published: September 25, 2012 Tri-City Herald By Annette Cary

The Department of Energy is starting an environmental study on transferring 1,641 acres of the nuclear reservation for industrial development to create new jobs. The Tri-City Development Council, which has been designated a community reuse organization for Hanford, has requested 1,341 acres near Richland city limits on the northwest corner of Horn Rapids Road and Stevens Drive. It's been joined in that request by the city of Richland, the Port of Benton and Benton County. In addition, TRIDEC has requested 300 acres to the north of the larger parcel for a clean energy park in conjunction with Energy Northwest. However, DOE will look at more acreage than requested by TRIDEC, according to a Federal Register notice. It is proposing also studying 2,772 additional acres next to the requested parcels, with a goal of studying the environmental impacts of transferring approximately 1,641 acres of the total of 4,413 acres evaluated. Read more here.

C-109 Retrievals Completed (Video)

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of River Protection and prime contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, have finished retrieval activities in C-109, the tenth single-shell tank completed at Hanford and the third this year. This video clip taken inside C-109 shows the bottom of the tank floor now visible after removing nearly 63,000 gallons of waste. See video

Retrieval of the Tenth Single-Shell Tank Complete at Hanford

DOE Press Release September 17, 2012

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) has advised the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that they have completed retrieval of radioactive and chemical waste from the third single-shell tank (SST) this year. Link

F Reactor Area Cleanup Complete

DOE Press Release September 19, 2012

RICHLAND, Wash. – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contractors have cleaned up the F Reactor Area, the first reactor area at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state to be fully remediated. While six of Hanford’s nine plutonium production reactors have been sealed up, or cocooned, the F Reactor Area is the first to have all of its associated buildings and waste sites cleaned up in addition to having its reactor sealed up. “The cleanup of the F Reactor Area shows the tremendous progress workers are making along Hanford’s River Corridor,” said Dave Huizenga, Senior Advisor for the DOE Office of Environmental Management. “The River Corridor is the complex’s largest environmental cleanup closure project. The F Area cleanup has substantially reduced risk to the Columbia Link Tri City Herald Link

Bat cave, radioactive carcasses part of 1st reactor cleanup

Published: September 20, 2012 By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald

Hanford workers have finished cleaning up a Hanford reactor site for the first time, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. Gone is the industrial complex with more than 100 buildings that once surrounded F Reactor, Hanford's third plutonium production reactor along the Columbia River. Contaminated soil and waste sites -- where debris was disposed of in unlined pits and trenches -- have been dug up. What remained of Hanford's former experimental animal farm, including buried carcasses and radioactive manure, was hauled off. Now most of the 2-square-mile complex looks much as it did before settlers began arriving, only to have to give up their farms and homes during World War II to make way for the Manhattan Project. Link

Former DOE official would abolish agency, he says in new book

Published: September 26, 2012 By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald

Bob Ferguson, a former Department of Energy official, makes the case for abolishing DOE in his new book released Tuesday. "It's an agency that basically has no focus," said Ferguson, who splits his time between homes in Richland and Oregon. Not only is DOE too diverse for anyone to lead effectively, it also has been politicized, and that has become institutionalized, he said. The Cost of Deceit and Delay was not the book he started out to write with the help of science writer Sallie Ortiz, he said. He was writing about his nuclear experience with recommendations for getting the nuclear renaissance back on track, when President Obama announced the termination of the Yucca Mountain, Nev., project to develop a repository for used commercial nuclear waste and high-level radioactive defense waste. Link

SRS

Savannah River Remediation asks for workers willing to retire as part of workforce reduction: No word yet on how many positions will be cut

Posted: September 26, 2012 - 8:38am By Rob Pavey/The Augusta Chronicle

AUGUSTA -- For the second time in as many months, a major Savannah River Site contractor is seeking workers willing to resign or retire as part of a workforce reduction approved by the U.S. Department of Energy. The contractor, Savannah River Remediation, is in charge of the site’s liquid waste cleanup operations, including the closure of Cold War-era storage tanks filled with radioactive waste. In a memo to employees, company President Dave Olson said the “self-select voluntary separation program” announced Monday is part of a “workforce management initiative to balance costs and resources.” Link

Savannah River CAB Meeting Presentations September 24-5, 2012

NEUP FY 2012 Integrated Research Projects Announced

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $13 million in funding for three university-led research teams to develop advanced light water reactor designs with inherent safety features, as well as one or more advanced materials and/or fuel-cladding concepts that would enhance the accident tolerance of the nuclear fuel system. The Department is engaging universities in the effort to find solutions through NEUP's Integrated Research Projects (IRP). IRP award recipients are listed below. Link

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

September 21, 2012 Link to Announcement

President Obama also announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

· Jean Bahr – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Steven M. Becker – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Susan L. Brantley – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Efi Foufoula-Georgiou – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Gerald S. Frankel – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Kenneth Lee Peddicord – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Paul J. Turinsky – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

· Mary Lou Zoback – Member, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

Misc

The Nuclear Renaissance Is Back, Industry Panel Says

ForbesTECH | 9/27/2012 @ 9:00AM |77 views

Encouraged by a new poll showing public support, industry leaders predicted Wednesday that nuclear power will resume the “renaissance” it was enjoying before the Fukushima accident roiled the industry 18 months ago. “The future of nuclear is looking pretty good,” said Jack Grobe, the executive director of Exelon Nuclear Partners, striking a much more positive tone than former Exelon CEO John Rowe did just six months ago. Exelon's 'Nuclear Guy': No New Nukes Grobe was among five industry leaders who lauded “The Future of Nuclear” Wednesday at the Great Lakes Symposium on Smart Grid and the New Energy Economy, held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. The panelists’ confidence stems in part from the nation’s fleet of aging coal plants, which are not expected to survive increasingly stringent environmental regulations. “We will retire these old fossil fuel plants and have to replace them with something,” said Scott Bond of Ameren Missouri, the utility that operates the Callaway Nuclear Generating Station. “The question is, what do you replace them with?” One obvious answer is a power plant that burns natural gas, which, thanks to fracking, is now so cheap and plentiful that Rowe said in March that it doesn’t make sense for new nuclear plants to compete. Wednesday’s panel touted the stable price of nuclear fuel as insurance against the vagaries of most other fuel prices including, over the long term, natural gas. “It’s not just an economic question,” said Exelon’s Jack Grobe. “It’s an energy diversity question.” “There’s a lot of focus on gas right now,” Bond said. But “fuel diversity is the only safe place to be for a utility.” Nuclear power may have stable fuel prices, but it faces an unstable regulatory environment subject to public doubts and political winds. That’s why the Nuclear Energy Institute is touting the results of a poll it released this week. “We just did a survey, and we had a strong majority of Americans–81 percent–who believe that nuclear energy is important for the nation’s future energy needs,” said Alex Marion, NEI’s vice president for nuclear operations. Link

Americans' Support for Nuclear Energy Solidifies, New National Survey Shows

NEI story September 19, 2012

Newest member of DNFSB

Sean Sullivan, whose appointment to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board was confirmed by Congress last month, is now on board literally. His term expires Oct. 18, 2015. According to his bio, Sullivan is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a submarine officer for 26 years before retiring as a Captain in 2006. He has technical training in operation, maintenance and oversight of nuclear reactors and nucleaer weapons. Link

Uranium Substitute Is No Longer Needed, but Its Disposal May Pose Security Risk

By MATTHEW L. WALD September 23, 2012 New York Times

WASHINGTON — At the dawn of the civilian nuclear age in the 1950s, one of the pressing questions was how to find enough fuel for reactors and bombs. The government and the private sector seized on a man-made substitute for natural uranium, producing about 3,400 pounds of an exotic and expensive material called uranium 233. Today, the problem is how to safely get rid of it. “We do consider this to be waste,” said David G. Huizenga, the senior administrator for environmental management at the Energy Department. “There’s no further need for it.” Uranium 233 looked attractive because it could be made in a reactor from thorium, a cheap and abundant radioactive metal, and, almost magically, the reactor would produce more fuel than it consumed. Utilities manufactured some of it at the Indian Point I reactor in Westchester County, N.Y., which is now retired, and at reactors in Colorado, Illinois and Pennsylvania. But in the end, ordinary uranium was cheaper, and 233 was not needed. “Nuclear physicists weren’t geologists and didn’t understand the supply of uranium,” said Frank N. Von Hippel, a physicist and public policy specialist at Princeton. “It turned out there was more uranium than people thought and less nuclear power than people thought there would be.” Ordinary uranium also proved to be much easier to work with than 233. But the government assembled a few bombs with the 233 version, and a research reactor in Tennessee briefly switched to it as fuel in 1968. But very little was used, so the material sat for decades in government laboratories and weapons plants. Link

Twenty-Three Nuclear Power Plants Found to Be in Tsunami Risk Areas

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2012) — Tsunamis are synonymous with the destruction of cities and homes and since the Japanese coast was devastated in March 2011 we now know that they cause nuclear disaster, endanger the safety of the population and pollute the environment. As such phenomena are still difficult to predict, a team of scientists has assessed "potentially dangerous" areas that are home to completed nuclear plants or those under construction. In the study published in the journalNatural Hazards, the researchers drew a map of the world's geographic zones that are more at risk of large tsunamis. Based on this data, 23 nuclear power plants with 74 reactors have been identified in high risk areas. One of them includes Fukushima I. Out of them, 13 plants with 29 reactors are active; another four, that now have 20 reactors, are being expanded to house nine more; and there are seven new plants under construction with 16 reactors. Link

Congress

H.J.Res. 117: Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2013

Sponsor: Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers [R-KY5]

Joint Resolution Passed 62/30, simple majority required. This resolution was passed by Congress on September 22, 2012 and goes to the President next.

Nuclear group likes chances for waste management progress next Congress

By Zack Colman - 09/17/12 04:35 PM ET The HIll

A nuclear energy industry group said Monday that it is “optimistic” Congress would move forward on nuclear waste management legislation next session. Alex Flint, senior vice president of government relations with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said the tenor of a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing last week raised hopes for congressional progress on storing spent nuclear fuel. That hearing discussed a nuclear waste management bill(S. 3469) that was designed as a table setter for more

substantive talks next session. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the retiring committee chairman. “I think there’s more overlap between the two parties on energy policy than there was a decade ago, and I definitely think nuclear is part of that overlap,” Flint said. Link

Thursday, September 27, 2012

CRESP Update #7 September 27, 2012