ECA Update: October 9, 2014
Published: Thu, 10/09/14
Hanford History Project Now Online
The Hanford History Partnership, a collaborative effort of Washington State University Tri-Cities and regional organizations, has been on a mission share Hanford's history. "From pioneers to post-war cleanup," the Partnership has begun sharing some of the oral histories online. Just this week, they posted videos on their YouTube page here. Take a look!
Moniz says safety culture at Hanford vit plant led to problems
Tri-City Herald
October 7, 2014
Technical issues at the Hanford vitrification plant could have been resolved earlier if there had been more attention to feedback from employees and others, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Tuesday.
Moniz made the comments at a hearing of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on Department of Energy safety culture, which was webcast from Washington, D.C.
Worker reluctance to raise issues or management reluctance to listen to concerns might have contributed to those technical issues, safety board members said.
Workers and managers need to feel they can discuss issues and that differences of opinion on technical matters will be resolved in a professional way, Moniz said.
"Those on the front lines I think have a lot to offer in terms of how work should go forward," Moniz said.
Safety culture issues the board identified in 2011 hampered resolution of technical problems, Chairman Peter Winokur said. When the board came to Kennewick in 2012, it heard that some problems, such as possible corrosion within the plant, had not been addressed for more than a decade.
When Moniz became energy secretary a year and a half ago, "my technical judgment, let alone my managerial judgment, was that it would be very unsafe to execute the plan of record without resolving those technical issues," he said.
Progress has been made on technical issues at the vitrification plant in the last nine months, but they are not resolved, he said.
Without resolution, DOE and the state have not been able to agree on new court-enforced consent degree deadlines for the vitrification plant, Moniz said. The state wants a lengthy and detailed list of deadlines, but DOE is determined to wait until it knows more about technical issue resolution to commit to deadlines.
Deadlines can drive work and compromise safety, Moniz said, using the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico as an example. The immediate response after the national radioactive waste repository was shut down because of a fire earlier this year was to set dates for a restart. But Moniz was unwilling to do that without a recovery plan in place.
Although DOE and the state of Washington could not agree on new consent decree deadlines for the vitrification plant at Hanford and have asked the federal court to intervene, they have both agreed to the fundamentals of a phased approach to waste treatment, Moniz said.
"The driver of that was precisely the unresolved technical issues," he said.
Both the state and DOE have agreed that the best plan is to start glassifying low-activity radioactive waste at the vitrification plant to prepare it for disposal, while technical issues that affect glassification of high-level radioactive waste are resolved.
A follow-up assessment of the safety culture at the vitrification plant this year found no significant improvement in employee perceptions despite two years of work by DOE to resolve the issue. In fact, some of the trends were negative, board members said.
A safety culture that is decades old will take time to change and will require commitment, particularly because the concerns identified are so great, said Mark Whitney, DOE acting assistant secretary for environmental management.
"I think we have the right team in place to do that" under the leadership of Kevin Smith, manager of the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, Whitney said.
The Office of River Protection has found some actions to improve safety culture have not been effective, but others have been, Whitney said. Good ideas have been implemented that can be used to improve safety culture at other DOE sites.
Another follow-up review of the safety culture is planned for the Hanford vitrification plant, giving officials there a year to make improvements, Moniz said.
That sends a strong message and if there is not improvement, there will "be a more stern message," he said.
Some improvement in safety culture at DOE sites also can be driven by how contracts are structured as early as the bid request process, Moniz said, and what incentives they include for companies hired to do environmental cleanup work.
DOE has recruited two individuals with labor experience who will be working with procurement officials on how contracts are structured, he said.
DOE also has refocused performance evaluations for vitrification plant contractor Bechtel National to put more focus on technical resolution and self-identification of problems, Whitney said.
Within a few weeks a charter will be completed to form a new DOE safety culture improvement panel to manage consistent improvements and maintain them, Moniz said.
DOE also has focused on a new training program for senior leadership across DOE because leadership behavior is a driver of the safety culture, Moniz said. About 2,000 leaders and managers in DOE have taken the training. Next it will be offered to supervisors.
DOE also has had sites across the DOE cleanup complex do self-assessments of safety culture in response to the 2011 recommendation by the safety board. Results have tended to be more positive than the independent reviews, including at the New Mexico waste repository.
A review at the repository found the safety culture was mature, but a fire 13 months later led to an in-depth look that found the safety culture was troubled.
"We are focusing on the guidance for conducting self assessments and increasing the rigor and the structure and the consistency of those," Whitney said.
A link to the recording of the hearing is posted at www.dnfsb.gov.
NNSA moving forward with Red Team's alternative to UPF; Calciner project at Y-12 to cost about $40M
October 2, 2014
Atomic City Underground
The National Nuclear Security Administration is moving ahead with the Red Team's strategy for modernizing uranium operations at Y-12 at an affordable cost, and a part of that strategy is moving some mission-critical activities out of the age-weakened 9212 uranium-processing complex as soon as possible.
The NNSA has provided little information about the effort, but some components of the strategy have been revealed publicly by reports from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. A recently released Aug. 29 memo by safety board staff assigned to Y-12 noted that Tim Driscoll -- the NNSA's uranium czar -- had visited Y-12 to receive briefings on the Consolidated Nuclear Security (the Y-12 contractor) response to his "letters of direction" in how to carry out the Red Team strategy.
Driscoll has reportedly been at Y-12 on multiple occasions over the past couple of months to get an up-close view of operations and to meet face-to-face with those carrying out the plans.
According to the DNFSB memo, the topics of his late-August visit including some of the production substitute projects at Y-12, including Calciner and Electro-refining -- as well as efforts to reduce the inventory of highly enriched uranium in the plant's main production zone known as Area 5. Driscoll also was reportedly interested in some of the risk-reduction activities taking place that go beyond the de-inventory effort.
The safety board report said the Uranium Program Manager (Driscoll) had issued a letter to the NNSA Production Office Manager (Steve Erhart) approving Critical Decision-0 (Mission Need) for the Calciner project at Y-12.
"The rough order of magnitude total project cost is estimated between $20 million and $79 million with a point estimate of $40 million," the memo stated. "In the letter the UPM delegates the NNSA associate administrator for infrastructure and safety to serve as the acquisition executive until CD-1 determination."
Earlier reports had indicated that Y-12 planned to do some of the alternative production processes in Building 9215 (near the 9212 facility), but the NNSA has not confirmed that the Calciner project for processing enriched uranium will be housed there.
"Decisions regarding the deployment of Electro-refining and the Calciner have not been completed at this time," NNSA spokesman Steven Wyatt said.
Wyatt said the Calciner is intended to convert low-equity liquids containing uranium to an oxide. It is a system to convert low equity material to a safer form that can be disposed of as waste or used in other processes, he said.
Oak Ridge milestone: K-31 building is coming down
Knoxville News Sentinel
October 8, 2014
OAK RIDGE -- It was a sunny autumn day almost too nice for destruction, but that was the scene Wednesday as heavy machinery gouged holes in the K-31 building and a crowd of onlookers gathered for the latest milestone in the post-Cold War cleanup in Oak Ridge.
K-31 is the fourth of five uranium-enrichment dinosaurs to be demolished at the sprawling government site that's gradually being converted to an industrial park.
At one time, decades ago, Oak Ridge boasted the world's largest gaseous diffusion complex for processing uranium. The facilities separated the isotopes of uranium in a gaseous form and concentrated the fissionable U-235 isotope for use in nuclear weapons and to fuel nuclear reactors in the United States and its allies abroad.
The 750,000-square-foot K-31 was part of the post-World War II expansion of the Oak Ridge complex, becoming operational in 1951. It was shut down in 1985, as demand for enrichment services declined and the Department of Energy began shutting down some of its gaseous diffusion facilities, which required lots of electricity.
It's expected to take about a year to demolish the two-story behemoth, which covers 17 acres, and dispose of the lightly contaminated debris.
The K-31 project is expected to be far easier than the demolition of the mile-long K-25, which took several years to complete, cost on the order of $1 billion and posed greater risks to the workers and the environment.
The uranium converters and processors have already been removed from K-31, as part of an earlier three-building project headed by BNFL Inc., and most of the radioactive contamination has been scrubbed away as well.
Ken Rueter, the president of UCOR, said the K-31 project is months ahead of schedule because of an accelerated work plan. The DOE contractor was able to take hundreds of experienced workers with security clearances and shift them from work on K-25 building to the K-31 project. Over the past few months, workers prepared the building for demolition by removing hazardous materials and stripping away the siding -- leaving mostly the skeleton of a facility that was a Cold War workhorse for the nuclear industry.
UCOR plans to employ that same strategy next year when the K-31 job is complete and the contractor begins demolition activities at K-27 -- the fifth and final of the gaseous diffusion facilities at the site that's now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park.
Rueter said the plan is to complete all of demolition and cleanup of the gaseous diffusion facilities by the end of 2016.
"Achieving this vision will mark the first-ever complete cleanup of a gaseous diffusion plant and facilities," he said in a statement. "Removal of K-31 -- and, afterward, K-27 -- will eliminate a nuclear hazard and open up more ETTP property for reindustrialization and regional economic development."
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam visited the Oak Ridge site earlier this year and heralded the potential of such a large site -- with built-in infrastructure, easy access to transportation routes, including rail and water -- for future development. There are reports of a client possibly interested in developing a large parcel that includes the area where K-31 now sits.
Sue Cange, the Department of Energy's acting environmental chief in Oak Ridge, praised the workers for their commitment to the project and attention to safety.
Los Alamos lab's safety lapses faulted for radioactive leak
Chemisty World
October 7, 2014
A radioactive material leak that affected 22 workers and closed the US's only permanent nuclear waste repository was likely the result of a failure to follow safety procedures.
The US Department of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) generates large volumes of transuranic waste - mostly contaminated items like clothing and tools. Since January 2012, the lab has shipped more than 3700m3 of such waste to a DOE facility in New Mexico, for eventual permanent disposal.
However, a barrel containing transuranic waste from the lab ruptured at the nuclear waste repository on 14 February, contaminating the facility and exposing personnel to radiation, according to a report from the DOE's Office of Inspector General (OIG). Operations were immediately suspended at the facility and the event reportedly led to the reassignment of four LANL employees.
The drum in question was processed at LANL and is known to have contained nitrate salts and organic material, which the DOE has said are likely to have been contributing factors in the release.
The repository's closure is expected to last two years and the financial implications are estimated from the tens of millions of dollars to more than half a billion dollars. The closure will slow remediation at numerous DOE sites by delaying permanent waste disposal, the OIG said.
The report raised the concern that not all of LANL's waste management procedures were properly vetted through the 'established procedure revision process', and they didn't all conform to established environmental requirements. For example, the office said contractor officials failed to ensure that changes to waste treatment procedures were properly documented, reviewed and approved, and that they incorporated all environmental requirements for transuranic waste processing.
'These weaknesses led to an environment that permitted the introduction of potentially incompatible materials to [transuranic] storage drums,' the OIG concluded. It suggested that this action may have led to a chemical reaction that compromised the drums. The office noted that Los Alamos National Security, which operates and manages LANL, and a subcontractor added potentially incompatible materials to waste stored in drums during the waste remediation - organic cat litter and acid neutralisers.
'We are pleased that this report correctly identifies the central role of LANL in causing the contamination,' said Greg Mello, who directs the Los Alamos Study Group, a non-profit focused on nuclear disarmament and environmental protection. 'The violations of established well-procedures and lack of common chemical knowledge are shocking.'
Feds Offer $1 billion Cleanup Contract in E. Idaho
East Idaho News
October 6, 2014
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) - Federal officials this week plan to meet with companies interested in a $1 billion contract to clean up radioactive waste at an eastern Idaho nuclear facility.
The Post Register reports that the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho Cleanup Project Core is a five-year contract that also includes watching over spent nuclear fuel at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Events planned this week include an overview conference Monday, a site tour Tuesday, and one-on-one sessions Wednesday.
Three other cleanup contracts worth far less will also advance in the coming months.
Currently, two companies with contracts that expire Sept. 30, 2015, handle cleanup tasks.
But the Department of Energy plans to split those duties four ways with contracts of five to nine years.
Leak probe shows lower radiation levels
Knoxville News Sentinel
October 8, 2014
The bad news, I suppose, is that investigators have yet to locate the source of a leak -- discovered a few weeks ago -- in the reactor pool at one of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's decades-old research reactors.
The good news is that the irradiated components that are stored in that reactor pool are not nearly as radioactive as they once were. Lower levels of radioactivity may facilitate their removal.
And, if the radioactive components are removed, then the leak won't really matter much anymore.
Once the radioactive components are gone, the pool at the Oak Ridge Research Reactor could be drained of its 125,000 gallons of water, which currently provides shielding for the radioactive materials.
According to Mike Koentop, executive officer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management in Oak Ridge, a recent survey of the components stored in the pool found that the radioactivity had declined by 95 percent since the last survey was conducted in 1999.
The dose-meter survey was performed as part of the project to locate and repair a leak in the reactor's storage pool or take other actions to deal with the radiological equipment that's stored there.
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), DOE's cleanup manager, is heading the investigation at the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, which has been shut down since the 1980s and is awaiting decommissioning and, eventually, demolition.
The decline in radiation levels over the past 15 years is due to the natural decay process. Despite the reduced radioactivity, the metals and equipment stored in the pool are too hot to leave unshielded, Koentop said.
"The irradiated components still require shielding to protect workers in the facility," Koentop said.
And, as noted earlier, the water in the pool is what currently provides the necessary shielding.
The DOE official said a video camera was also lowered into the pool to look for deterioration and other causes for concern, but it apparently didn't reveal much new information.
"The pool poses no new or unexpected hazard.," he said.
Koentop said a technical assistance team working on the project will use the radiation measurements to better assess the hazards of the pool's contents.
"The resulting characterization data will be used to help determine if the most suitable remedy is to locate and repair the water seepage or remove and dispose of the irradiated components," he said.
Since the problem was discovered in early September, the leak rate -- estimated at about 100 drops per minute -- has remained stable.
If the investigation team decides to remove the radioactive components and relocate them to one of the shielded hot cells on the ORNL campus or some other site, that would set the stage for workers to drain the pool, perform a few other maintenance activities and get a head start on the old reactor's eventual removal.
Current cleanup priorities, as agreed upon by DOE and environmental regulators, would not begin demolition of the Oak Ridge Research Reactor and other old reactors at ORNL until the 2030s.
Curbing the risks, even if a little at a time, would seem to make good sense.
SRNS inks partnership with Claflin University
The Aiken Standard
October 6, 2014
The Savannah River Site's management and operations contractor inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Claflin University to fund 10, $2,500 scholarships and provide a variety of additional resources to include on-campus seminars and potential internships at SRS.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, or SRNS, signed the memorandum Monday in the SRNS building.
Under the memorandum, the two groups will strive to achieve several goals including the establishment of a scholarship fund, conducting career development seminars and facilitating researching projects at SRNS.
The terms of the agreement will take effect immediately with the scholarships for the spring semester awarded in January 2015.
Carol Johnson, the SRNS president and CEO, said a key part of the contractor's philanthropic efforts is education, which is why the memorandum signing made sense.
"I'm learning more about Claflin, and one of the things I've learned is that their science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs are really at the forefront of what Claflin offers," she said. "So that's right in line of what we believe and what we want to see from our future workforce."
Johnson signed the agreement with Henry Tisdale, the president of Claflin University. Tisdale said the beginning stages of the agreement occurred under former SRNS president Dwayne Wilson. However, the two groups were still able to come together for the signing under Johnson's leadership.
"Dwayne took us up on an invitation to visit us at Claflin, and we had a chance to share with him some of the things we were doing," he said. "We decided we wanted to move it to a formal memorandum to better engage our students. SRNS has been great in seeing it through under Carol, so we look forward to working with them."
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is a Fluor Partnership comprised of Fluor, Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell, responsible for the management and operations of the Savannah River Site, including the Savannah River National Laboratory.
Claflin University is in Orangeburg. The school was founded in 1869 and is the oldest historically black college or university in the state.
DOE Loans Are Only the Beginning for Much-Needed Investment in Nuclear
The Energy Collective
October 8, 2014
The Department of Energy's announcement for up to $12.6 billion in loan guarantees for advanced nuclear is great news for dozens of US companies developing cutting-edge nuclear power technologies struggling to find support in the US market. While the loans are a promising start, there are several policies that have been left out of the conversation, which could jump-start the commercialization of much more disruptive advanced reactor designs.
Last week, the Department of Energy announced a major investment in advanced nuclear power, a draft solicitation for up to $12.6 billion in loan guarantees across four categories of innovative nuclear energy technologies: front-end fuel cycle innovation, advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors, and upgrades or uprates to existing reactors.
These loans are great news for the dozens of US companies developing cutting-edge nuclear power technologies that are struggling to find support in the US market. From TerraPower's travelling wave reactor, to GE-Hitachi's integral fast reactor, to Transatomic's waste-burning molten salt reactor, there's no shortage of groundbreaking engineering going on in the US nuclear industry. The DOE's announcement shows that the Obama administration is serious about tackling climate change and that nuclear power will play an important role.
The Advanced Nuclear Energy Projects loan guarantee is significant in that it funds two areas that don't get a lot of press but could have an outsized impact on America's nuclear future: front-end innovation and uprates and upgrades. The front end of the nuclear fuel cycle has a lot of opportunity for innovation and can move much faster than licensing new reactor designs. Uprates, where the nameplate capacity or maximum power output of a plant is increased through equipment upgrades, provide more concrete benefits. A Breakthrough analysis found that from 1996 to 2012, the United States added 4.6GW of nuclear generating capacity just through uprates, all without building a single new plant.
Despite what the title Advanced Nuclear suggests, the loan guarantees also can be used for equipment upgrades on existing reactors that are "not operating and cannot operate without such improvements." While not as exciting as building next-generation nuclear plants, preventing the closure of existing zero-carbon energy can forestall just as much carbon emissions at a much cheaper price. Might part of the loan be used to resurrect plants such as San Onofre or save floundering plants threatened with closure?
While many groups, including the Breakthrough Institute, have been calling for such an investment, we have also highlighted other policies that could help fast-track the commercialization of safer and cheaper advanced nuclear reactors.
The DOE first offered loan guarantees for nuclear power in 2005, with Congress authorizing up to $17.5 billion. And in 2011, the Obama administration called to raise that amount to $36 billion. However, demand for these loan guarantees failed to materialize. While the pair of new reactors under construction in Georgia did get a loan guarantee of $8.3 billion, another plant in South Carolina decided to stick with commercial financing rather than jump through DOE's hoops. This experience suggests that such loan guarantees are perhaps not needed for conventional nuclear power, but might be very much in demand for truly groundbreaking designs.
Lessons can be learned from the recent DOE funding opportunity for the commercialization of small modular reactors (SMRs). While the solicitation was open to any type of SMR, most assumed the DOE would choose a more traditional light-water design, as they eventually did, even though some advanced SMR designs were submitted (such as General Atomics' gas-cooled fast reactor). Relatedly, the rules for the Advanced Nuclear loan guarantee appear biased against the more disruptive advanced reactors in which China, Russia, and India are investing billions: molten salt, fast breeder, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, lead-cooled and sodium-cooled fast reactors, or even fusion.
For example, applicants for this loan guarantee must have already filed or obtained regulatory approval, a significant obstacle for many reactor developers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not currently reviewing application for any Generation IV reactor. Furthermore, almost all applicants must provide the specific project location for their build, another obstacle when most utilities aren't even building traditional light-water reactors. Among the rubrics for determining a potential project's merit, the DOE lists both "technical readiness" and innovativeness as compared to existing commercial technology, which significantly narrows the field of nuclear reactor technology.
As Breakthrough has argued in the report How to Make Nuclear Cheap, the DOE should be supporting nuclear innovation through parallel policies. They could fund testbeds where reactor developers can build prototypes and experiment in a safe environment, or fund an initiative within the NRC to accelerate the licensing process for innovative nuclear power concepts, or invest in advanced steels research and manufacturing facilities to build up the domestic nuclear supply chain.
With the recent funding award of up to $452 million for two small modular reactor developers, Babcock & Wilcox and Nuscale, one wonders if these guaranteed loans are targeted towards the eventual deployment of these SMRs once they finish licensing approval. That's not such a bad idea when at least two more nuclear reactors are going to retire in the US in the next five years- in addition to 60 GW of coal power that we'd hope to replace with a zero-carbon baseload option like nuclear- and small-modular reactors could replace these even faster.
So while the loan guarantee may not get us the most exciting advanced nuclear reactors, it's a big step in the right direction. By developing the domestic nuclear supply chain and re-investing in the existing reactor fleet, the DOE can keep the domestic nuclear innovation ecosystem alive and well. Declassified transcripts detail security hearings for Manhattan Project director Oppenheimer
Associated Press
October 8, 2014
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- After more than half a century of intrigue and mystery, the U.S. Department of Energy has declassified documents related to a Cold War hearing for the man who directed the Manhattan Project and was later accused of having communist sympathies.
The department last week released transcripts of the 1950s hearings on the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer, providing more insight into the previously secret world that surrounded development of the atomic bomb and the anti-communist hysteria that gripped the nation amid the growing power of the Soviet Union.
Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The secretive projects involved three research and production facilities at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.
The once-celebrated physicist lost his security clearance following the four-week, closed-door hearing. Officials also alleged that Oppenheimer's wife and brother had both been communists and he had contributed to communist front-organizations.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said the release of the documents finally lifts the cloud of secrecy on the Oppenheimer case that has fascinated historians and scholars for decades.
"This was a landmark case in U.S. history and Cold War history," Aftergood said. "It represents a high point during anti-community anxiety and tarnished the reputation of America's leading scientist."
The Energy Department had previously declassified portions of the transcripts but with redacted information.
Aftergood said the newly declassified material provided more details, including nuisances about the development of the atomic bomb, debates over the hydrogen bomb and reflection on atomic espionage.
The documents also show how unfairly Oppenheimer was treated immediately following World War II, Aftergood said.
After the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer served as director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study until he retired in 1966.
President Lyndon B. Johnson later tried to erase the embarrassment of Oppenheimer's treatment by honoring him with the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Award in 1963.
Oppenheimer died of throat cancer in 1967. |
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