DOE – EM
EM Update Newsletter October 2012 Link
·
Oak Ridge Enters Next K-25 Demolition
Phase
·
Idaho Site Achieves Key Fuel Transfer
Milestones
·
Dr. Proton and Adam the Atom Take to the
Classroom with an Updated Look
·
Los Alamos Lab Shatters Records in First
Year of Accelerated Shipping Effort
·
EM Site-Specific Advisory Board Chairs
Gather for Biannual Meeting in D.C.
·
EM Celebrates Historic Sludge Removal
WSJ: Industry looks for
change among Obama energy officials
11.08.2012
| HP News Services By TENNILLE
TRACY and RYAN TRACY The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- Energy-industry officials and
environmental groups are watching for change at the top in President Barack
Obama's second term, with Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson,
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu seen as possible
candidates to step down. Any new faces could have a big impact on some of the
most important issues affecting the US economy, including the rapid growth of
oil and gas production backed by new drilling technologies and the decline of
coal. Mr. Salazar's spokesman said the secretary remains "focused on the
job." The White House declined to comment on who might leave the Cabinet
or when, and representatives of the EPA and the Energy Department didn't return
messages seeking comment.
Washington lobbyists and Capitol Hill staff are
already circulating lists of possible candidates for the posts. The EPA job is
particularly critical, whether Ms. Jackson holds it, because the agency must
make decisions about regulating greenhouse gases in the coming year that could
effectively block new coal-fired power plants. Presidents typically shuffle
their cabinets going into a second term. The grueling workload and relatively
low government salaries often prompt some leaders to step aside. While there is
no particular impetus for Ms. Jackson or Messrs. Salazar and Chu to leave right
away, all three have shouldered considerable criticism from corporate
executives, industry lobbyists and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Mr. Salazar, a
former US senator from Colorado, was widely criticized for issuing a temporary
drilling ban after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, absorbed
flak for supporting loan guarantees for bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra.
Perhaps the most popular target for Republicans is Ms. Jackson. A former New
Jersey environmental official, Ms. Jackson has been accused by Republicans of
expanding her agency's authority and tackling climate change despite
disagreement on the issue on Capitol Hill. Link
Hanford
Energy secretary to move forward with Hanford vit
plant
Tri-City HErald Published:
November 9, 2012 By Annette Cary, Tri-City
Herald
Energy Secretary
Steven Chu plans to move the Hanford vitrification plant project forward with
new teams to take focused looks at technical issues and a separate evaluation
of opportunities for more efficient or faster operations at the plant. He made
the announcement Thursday in a memo to employees of the Department of Energy's
Hanford Office of River Protection. Chu has taken a personal interest in
resolving issues at the plant, assembling a hand-picked group of experts that
he spent several days with at Hanford in September. They helped develop the
plan announced Thursday to get the project on track. DOE earlier said that it
would not be able to build the plant for the $12.2 billion planned or have it
operating as legally required by 2019 because of technical issues, some of them
related to the safe and efficient operation of the plant. The plant is being
built to treat for disposal up to 56 million gallons of radioactive and
hazardous chemical waste left from the past production of plutonium for the
nation's nuclear weapons program. Construction on parts of the plant that will
handle high-level radioactive waste has been slowed or stopped while technical
issues are addressed. "I am confident that with this increased focus on
the resolution of technical challenges, the addition of expertise from academia,
national laboratories and industry, and some additional analysis and testing,
we will be able to resolve the remaining technical challenges and ensure the
mission will be accomplished safely and efficiently," Chu said in the
memo. Technical issues have been "wrestled" into five groups and five
new teams will drill down into the issues, said David Huizenga, senior adviser
for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which oversees Hanford work.
The teams will focus on finalizing the design of the vitrification plant, said
Langdon Holton, of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of Chu's experts.
"The secretary wants a path forward in the next few months," Huizenga
said. However, some of the work to resolve technical issues could take several
years to close out, Holton said. Among the most time consuming will be a new
plan to do full-scale mixing testing of some of the plant's tanks that will
hold high-level radioactive waste rather than the large-scale testing DOE
agreed to two years ago. A new high-bay laboratory -- which will be donated to
Washington State University Tri-Cities -- was built for the large-scale testing
and now tanks that later will be moved to the vitrification plant will be
tested outside the building. Link
DOE takes a step back
from changes to Hanford Advisory Board
Published: November 5, 2012 By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
The Department of Energy will not impose term
limits for any Hanford Advisory Board seats as appointments are made for 2013,
according to David Huizenga, senior adviser for DOE's Office of Environmental
Management. He made the announcement in a recent letter to the board before its
meeting Thursday and Friday in Richland. Link
Hanford
Advisory Board recommends DOE start building new waste tanks
Published:
November 3, 2012 Tri City Herald
The Hanford Advisory Board is
recommending the Department of Energy start work immediately to build new
storage tanks for high-level radioactive waste. Click to Continue »
Umatillas
to conduct Hanford research at new field station
Department of Energy |
TriCityHerald.com Thursday, November 1 2012, 9:29 AM
MISSION, Ore. -- Some 580
species of native plants grow on the Hanford nuclear reservation. But as land
is restored after portions of environmental cleanup are completed, just eight
species are replanted. Increasing the diversity of species used to replant
hundreds of acres of land is one of the goals of the new field research station
of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation that was
dedicated Monday. The station is on tribal land east of Pendleton. The ceremony
opened with prayer, song, brief speeches and a tour for David Huizenga, the
senior adviser for DOE's Office of Environmental Management in Washington, D.C.
The field station will be used to protect, preserve and enhance
treaty-protected rights, said Les Minthorn, chairman of the confederated
tribes' board. "We are not going to own them if we do not preserve
them," he said. The tribes have treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather on
Hanford land and also are recognized as a trustee of Hanford natural resources.
Not only will tribal research that helps improve survival rates for additional
native species increase the availability of treaty resources, but it also will
reduce wildfire risk, according to the confederated tribes. "We could have
no better partner than you to set the stage for the future of Hanford and bring
it back to its natural state," said Huizenga, who leads environmental
cleanup work across the DOE complex, at the dedication. The field station,
which was paid for in part with $730,000 from DOE, includes two geodesic dome
greenhouses with a combined growing space of about 8,800 square feet. They will
be used to grow tens of thousands of seedlings. Field testing of replanting
methods for the greenhouse seedlings will be done on an acre of land east of
the greenhouse. It can hold 30 raised-bed plots. The project also includes a
biology laboratory and an analytical chemistry laboratory. In research already
done, confederated tribes staff have collected seed for 83 of the native
species at Hanford and continue to add to the seed collection. However, in
attempts to grow 14 of the species, germination has ranged from none to 85
percent, with more research needed to determine why the rate varies. That the
field center was built is a tribute to Stuart Harris, director of the
confederated tribes' Department of Science and Engineering, Huizenga said. He
had been looking for a way to get tribal youths interested in science and
engineering, Harris said. When DOE decided to increase cleanup of land along
the Columbia River to finish most of it by 2015, there was a reason for the
tribes and DOE to interact, he said. The tribes looked past cleanup to
restoration and reclamation of land that had been used for production of
weapons plutonium from World War II through the Cold War, Harris said. It
presented a chance for the tribes to decide the quality of restoration of land,
he said. But even more important than the research and scientific analysis that
will be done at the field research station will be its role in training tribal
and other students during the summers, he said. They will get a taste of what
it would be like to work at a university or federal research laboratory, he
said. The project will help train a new generation of tribal members in scientific
disciplines to help protect and preserve tribal resources and to evaluate the
long-term effects of contaminants, according to the confederated tribes. Link
$12.3M subcontract awarded
for "deep dig" at Hanford
Published: November 6, 2012 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Washington Closure Hanford has awarded a subcontract
worth $12.3 million to clean up the remaining waste sites in the soil around
Hanford's D, DR and H reactors. TerranearPMC, a small business based in Irving,
Texas, that qualifies under Small Business Administration standards as a
disadvantaged business, will do the work. It has an office in Kennewick.
Terranear will be digging up chromium-contaminated soil, some of it down to
groundwater about 85 feet deep. The work also includes digging up pipelines
used for chemically contaminated waste and some miscellaneous waste sites.
"We're expecting to remove about 2.5 million
tons of material during the course of this subcontract," said Scott Myers,
Washington Closure project manager for field remediation at the three reactors.
Similar work to dig up chromium down to groundwater
about 85 feet deep was done successfully near Hanford's C Reactor, with much of
the work completed this spring. It was the first time Hanford workers have
excavated that deep to remove chemical contamination. "We will take full
advantage of lessons learned from work at C," Myers said.
Hexavalent chromium was added to cooling water at
Hanford reactors used to produce plutonium for the nation's weapons program
during World War II and the Cold War. Near the D and DR reactors, which were
built near each other along the Columbia River, the chromium has contaminated the
soil in three places down to groundwater. The chromium there was spilled or
leaked in multiple places from the system that delivered sodium dichromate by
railcar and distributed it through a series of pipelines and valve boxes. The
three deep waste sites will be excavated in two digs, one for two of the sites
that are near one and other. Digging so deep creates a wide excavation site. At
C Reactor, two nearby sites covered the area of about 15 football fields. H
Reactor, one of nine former Hanford production reactors along the Columbia
River, is about two miles from the D and DR reactors downriver. Because the
nature of the cleanup work for the sites is so similar, it made sense to
combine the work under one subcontract and save taxpayers money, Myers said.
The chrome pipelines, which were near the ground surface, already have been dug
up near the reactors. But Terranear will remove deeper pipelines, ranging from
6 inches to 72 inches in diameter, used to carry waste.$12.3M
subcontr1a1c/t9a/1w2arded f or "deep dig" at Hanford. Link
SRS
Mystery
growth on Savannah River Site nuclear waste not spreading
By Rob Pavey, Staff Writer Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012 9:23 PM
The August Chronicle
Scientists still don’t know what created the mysterious
bacteria found growing on Savannah River Site’s spent nuclear fuel, but there
might be an easy way to get rid of it.
“We’re considering a mechanical remedy,” said Maxcine Maxted, the site’s
spent fuel program manager, during a presentation last week to the SRS Citizens
Advisory Board. The white, stringy “cobwebs” were first observed in October
2011 among fuel assemblies submerged 12 to 17 feet in the site’s L Area basin,
where aging nuclear materials from foreign and domestic research reactors are stored
and guarded.
An assessment
concluded it was “biological in nature” and had infested about 7 percent of the
3.5-million-gallon basin. “Of course it’s really not a cobweb, and it’s not
from a spider,” she said, adding that genetic tests of samples found about
3,000 different kinds of bacteria. In recent months, observers noticed areas
where the cobwebs were removed for sampling have not become reinfested.
“At this point, it’s
not increasing,” she said. “The spots where we vacuumed up samples are not coming
back.” The simple remedy, she said, might be to just physically remove the
material.
Although rare,
bacterial colonies have been observed in a few nuclear environments, including
a Canadian reactor and at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where a growth
developed in the site’s spent fuel basin after its 1979 accident. “This
material is still different, though, because nobody’s ever seen it in a stringy
structure,” Maxted said. “But we now know it’s not growing or spreading.” Link
RELATED STORIES
SRS nuclear growth "biological," but what does it eat?
Savannah River Site not concerned by leak at other site
By Rob Pavey Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 7:06 PM
August Chronicle
A leaking double-shell radioactive waste tank at the
government’s Hanford, Wash., nuclear complex spawned questions Tuesday about
the integrity of similar tanks at Savannah River Site. Though both sites store
large quantities of waste from Cold War nuclear weapons production, the leak at
Hanford is not a predictor of new problems at SRS, said Terry Spears, the
South Carolina site’s assistant manager for waste disposition. “We do have
double-shell tanks at SRS,” he told members of the SRS Citizens Advisory
Board. “But because there were no design standards around Department of Energy
sites, they were built at different times and with different designs.” A
40-year-old tank at Hanford failed because of defective welds, he said, and the
minor leakage involved material that seeped from the interior to the secondary
wall. “It was all contained
inside,” he said. Hanford’s 177 waste tanks include 28 double-shell tanks that
store waste moved from single-wall tanks found to be leaking, according to the Tri-City Herald in
Washington. By comparison, SRS once had 51 underground tanks holding up to 1.3
million gallons apiece. Two were closed in the 1990s, and two more were closed
this year.
Though some of the
site’s single-wall tanks are leaking, no issues have surfaced with double-shell
tanks at SRS, Spears said. The recent tank closures included final approval
from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to
clean up and close the remaining tanks. The next group of four closures is set
for 2014-15, with remaining single-wall tanks closed by 2022. All closures are
to be done by 2028.
The high-level waste in the tanks includes thick liquids, sludge with a consistency similar to peanut butter and a caustic material that turns to salt. The salt waste accounts for much of the volume, but the sludge is the most radioactive and much more dangerous. That material is sent to the Defense Waste Processing Facility at SRS, where it is “vitrified” in glass and sealed in steel canisters. Link
The high-level waste in the tanks includes thick liquids, sludge with a consistency similar to peanut butter and a caustic material that turns to salt. The salt waste accounts for much of the volume, but the sludge is the most radioactive and much more dangerous. That material is sent to the Defense Waste Processing Facility at SRS, where it is “vitrified” in glass and sealed in steel canisters. Link
Exam Said to Be Leaked to Guards at Nuclear SiteBy MATTHEW L. WALD New York Times Published: October 31, 2012
WASHINGTON — The security guards at a nuclear weapons plant who
failed to stop an 82-year-old nun from reaching a bomb fuel storage building earlier this
year were also cheating on a recertification exam, according to an internal investigation by the Department of Energy, which owns the weapons plant.
The exam, with answers, was circulated to guards at the Y-12 National Security
Complex, near Oak Ridge, Tenn., before
they sat down to take it, according to the report, by the department’s
inspector general. The report, released on Wednesday, said that the cheating
was enabled by the department itself. It was routine practice for the
department to involve contractor personnel in preparation of such exams,
because the federal government did not know enough about the security
arrangements to write the exam without the help of the contractor.
A federal security official sent the exam by encrypted e-mail to
“trusted agents” at the management contractor, B&W, but did not instruct
those executives to keep it secret from the people who would have to take it,
according to the report. The government found out about the cheating only
because an inspector visiting the plant noticed a copy of an exam on the seat
of a patrol vehicle the day before guards were to take it.
The security contractor was Wackenhut, but its contract was
terminated after a security breach on July 28, when the nun, Sister Megan
Gillespie Rice, and two accomplices cut through three layers of fence, splashed
blood on a building housing bomb-grade uranium, performed a Christian ritual
and then waited to be apprehended. A subsequent investigation found that many
security cameras had been disabled long before the break-in. Link
SRS reducing costs,
workers amid funding shortfall
By Rob Pavey Staff Writer Thursday, Nov. 8,
2012 8:47 PM The Augusta Chronicle
Savannah
River Site’s management contractor briefed its 4,600 employees on Thursday
about cost-cutting efforts spawned by a fiscal 2013 budget shortfall of $175
million. n a
video shared with workers, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions officials said the
funding challenge is significant and has the greatest effect on environmental
management projects, where the shortfall amounts to a 25 percent reduction that
became apparent in September, just weeks before the 2013 budget year began
Oct. 1. Steps taken to reduce costs include eliminating 341 employees through
voluntary separation and the release of about 440 staff augmentation and craft
workers.
Oak Ridge
Redoing UPF: it's a big deal
As noted in previous posts, the initial design work on the Uranium
Processing Facility didn't work out, apparently not providing enough room for
all of the needed equipment to do the duties on nuclear weapons. As a result, a
redesign effort is under way in a bigtime way, and Federal Project Director
John Eschenberg indicated a few weeks back that a more detailed understanding
of the path forward would be available in late October after an engineering
reevaluation had been completed. That work is reportedly done, but the National
Nuclear Security Administration doesn't have much to say -- at least not yet.
Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the NNSA in Oak Ridge, confirmed -- as of Nov. 1
-- that the NNSA had received the "replanning information." That's
basically all he said, noting, "We are in the process of reviewing it at
this time." There is still no detailed information on the detailed cost of
the multibillion-dollar production center at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.
Posted
by Frank Munger on November 2, 2012 at 10:17 PM Link
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector
General Office of Audits and Inspections
Inspection Report: Allegations of Organizational
Conflicts of Interest at Portsmouth and Oak Ridge INS-O-13-01 November 2012 Link
IG report cites conflict of interest issues
at Oak Ridge, Portsmouth
Posted by Frank Munger on
November 8, 2012 at 11:47 PM Knoxnews.comThe Department of
Energy's Office of Inspector General today released a
report saying that
inspectors had substantiated allegations of "organizational conflicts of
interest" at both Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge. Assistant IG Sandra Bruce
said the office was responding to complaints of potential conflicts involving
RSI (Restoration Services Inc.) and VETCO at Portsmouth, with similiar
conflicts involving UCOR (URS-CH2M Oak Ridge), DOE's cleanup manager in Oak
Ridge, and RSI, its lead subcontractor.
Misc
Energy winners and losers: A
snapshot
- 11/07/12 02:37 AM ET E2 The Wire
The
energy policy fallout from Tuesday’s elections will take time to shake out.
But here’s a quick snapshot of a few winners and losers now that President Obama has been reelected, Democrats retained the Senate and Republicans kept the House. Link
But here’s a quick snapshot of a few winners and losers now that President Obama has been reelected, Democrats retained the Senate and Republicans kept the House. Link
Reuters reports here and here on President Obama’s win means for energy
and environmental regulation.
Building
a Cadre of New Nuclear Professionals
http://www.iaea.org/ November 7,
2012
Stakeholder
Involvement in Nuclear Power Programmes
http://www.iaea.org/ November 7,
2012A
technical meeting on Stakeholder involvement in nuclear power – developing
sustainable relationships, expanding resources, and creative value took place
from 9-11 October, in Vienna Austria. Organized jointly by the IAEA and
FORATOM, the meeting brought together over 50 participants from 29 countries
and four international organizations, providing a multicultural forum for
lively discussions on nuclear communications. It ended mid-Thursday, concluding
a wide range of discussions and presentations on the ‘social’ side of nuclear
power. LinkWhat to expect on energy in a second Obama term? Reuters has a pair of analyses, here and here, predicting tougher federal regulation of oil and natural gas, new restrictions on natural gas production and use, continued tight access to reserves on federal lands and waters and a renewed push for higher taxes on energy companies. Let’s hope not. More regulation, unreasonable drilling restrictions and higher taxes probably would mean less energy produced, job losses and less revenue to governments, according to Wood Mackenzie’s 2011 study. Meanwhile, new, unnecessary federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing could limit the potential of oil and natural gas produced from shale – a key to American energy security and perhaps the president’s best chance to achieve his goals of reducing oil imports and emissions of carbon dioxide. The oil and natural gas industry is ready to continuing working with the administration to bring about increased domestic oil and gas production, more jobs and economic growth. With the election over, the president can:
· Approve the full Keystone XL pipeline, immediately putting thousands of Americans to work while strengthening our energy partnership with Canada.
Obama's Re-election: A Mandate for Clean Energy?
Posted November 7, 2012 theenergycollective.com
With President Obama’s victory
tonight, the renewable energy industry keeps an important ally in the White
House. The win comes at a time when energy is rising in national importance.
Given the extent to which the opposition made renewable energy an issue, I
think the President’s win gives him a mandate to make clean energy a key part
of the agenda for his second term.
Link
Link
A New Approach to Military Nuclear
Waste
By MATTHEW L. WALD New York Times November
6, 2012The United States has many pressing nuclear waste problems, but the worst
may be the leftovers from the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Unlike the
wastes from civilian reactors, the military wastes are liquids and sludges
stored in underground tanks in environmentally sensitive areas. Scores of tanks
have leaked some of the material into the dirt. And there is no debate about
how the wastes might be repurposed; they have already been scavenged for useful
materials like uranium and plutonium. So for
decades, the goal has been to solidify them by mixing them with glass, a
process called vitrification, so the material can eventually be buried in a
repository. With great difficulty and delay, the Energy Department opened a
factory to do just that in 1996 at its Savannah River nuclear reservation near
Aiken, S.C.But given the extraordinary delays and cost increases, a start-up, Kurion of Irvine, Calif., sees an opening. Kurion has already done nuclear work at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, where it built a system to filter cesium out of contaminated water at the plant’s stricken reactors. So far it has not convinced the Energy Department to hire it at Hanford, however. In the vitrification process, the wastes and glass are typically heated to melting temperature by giant electrodes submerged in the mixture. But the electrodes will eventually wear out — a problem if the plant has to run for decades and is so radioactive that the maintenance work has to be done by remote control, noted Richard Keenan, Kurion’s vice president for engineering.
