ECA Update: October 14, 2014

Published: Tue, 10/14/14


 
In this update:
King, Fischer Survey U.S. Nuclear Weapons Facilities in New Mexico
PoliticalNews.me

SRR reaches 6.5 M hours without lost workday
The Aiken Standard

SRNS recognized for safety culture
The Aiken Standard

DOE Issues Final Request for Proposal for Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center Services
DOE EM

Nuclear Weapons: Some Actions Have Been Taken to Address Challenges with the Uranium Processing Facility Design
GAO

DOE IG Special Report on Management Challenges
DOE OIG

Geophysical Classification for Munitions Response Fact Sheet
Interstate Technology Regulatory Council

Demolition of K-31 building underway
The Oak Ridger

Washington Closure Hanford pursues an uneven restoration around reactors
Yakima Herald

Health benefit information meeting set for ex-Hanford workers
Yakima Herald-Republic

A Book A Week: The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea
Associated Press
 
King, Fischer Survey U.S. Nuclear Weapons Facilities in New Mexico
PoliticalNews.me
October 9, 2014

ALBUQUERQUE, NM - U.S. Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), members of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces which has oversight of the country's nuclear weapons enterprise, toured the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. The national laboratories are responsible for maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent for the United States and for other science-related functions in support of U.S. national security interests.

"There's no denying that we live in a dangerous world where we continue to face both traditional and emerging threats. To confront these threats, we must have the best and brightest minds working to maintain our scientific and technological advantage and to discover the breakthroughs that will ensure that advantage well into the future," Senator King said. "As I saw today, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories are on the vanguard of these efforts, both in ensuring the U.S. nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective, and in conducting some of the most advanced scientific research in support of our national security interests."

"This week I had the opportunity to visit our nation's nuclear weapons laboratories. These unique facilities and the exceptional employees that work there maintain the nuclear weapons that STRATCOM relies on to defend our nation. Nuclear deterrence remains the ultimate safeguard for American security and it would not be possible without the hard working men and women who make up our nuclear enterprise," Senator Fischer said.

During their visit, the senators toured the nuclear weapons complex, met with leaders and scientists, expressed their gratitude to the workforce for their important contributions, and gained a better understanding of the issues and challenges associated with the senators' responsibilities on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

The Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces is responsible for oversight of United States nuclear and strategic forces; intelligence programs; space programs; cyber space programs; Department of Energy defense nuclear and environmental programs; and ballistic missile defense.

Following the visits to Los Alamos and Sandia, Senator King departed for a previously announced trip to India while Senator Fischer will continue to California to visit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 


SRR reaches 6.5 M hours without lost workday 
The Aiken Standard
October 9, 2014
 
Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor at the U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site, has surpassed 6.5 million hours of work without a lost workday. 
 
SRR employees achieved the milestone on Sept. 24. The company's last lost work day case occurred on March 25, 2013. 
 
To put this accomplishment in perspective, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates the average company in SRR's industry would have experienced 29 injuries, requiring a worker to miss a day of work during the span of 6.5 million hours. 
 
SRR has a long record of safety at SRS. SRR took over SRS liquid waste operations in July 2009. Now, every hour worked without a lost workday, means SRR adds to the longest streak since beginning the contract. 
 
SRS is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. SRR is composed of a team of companies led by URS Corporation with partners Bechtel National, CH2M HILL and Babcock & Wilcox. Critical subcontractors for the contract are AREVA, EnergySolutions and URS Professional Solutions.
 
 
SRNS recognized for safety culture 
The Aiken Standard
October 9, 2014
 
The Department of Energy's Voluntary Protection Program awarded the Savannah River Site's management and operations with STAR Status recognition, an achievement earned through safety excellence with the Legacy of Stars Award. 
 
According to a press release, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, or SRNS, has received 13 Star of Excellence Awards, including three consecutively, and recently received their fourth Legacy of Stars Award. 
 
"It is always gratifying to receive outside validation of our successful safety culture," said SRNS President and CEO Carol Johnson. "But, more importantly, this award reflects the care and compassion SRNS employees have not only for their personal safety, but the safety of their coworkers and community, as well." 
 
Safety recognition has been a recurring theme for SRNS. The contractor received three other awards earlier this year. 
 
SRNS was recognized for its safety accomplishments during the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance Safety Awards Ceremony, in Spartanburg. 
 
In addition, the contractor was recognized at the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce Safety Awards Ceremony in Columbia and by the Occupational Safety and Health Department for reducing the recordable occupational injuries and illnesses among its workers. 
 
"It's an honor to work with the dedicated men and women of SRNS who make our company one of the safest in this industry," Johnson said.
 
 
DOE Issues Final Request for Proposal for Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center Services
Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management
October 14, 2014
 
Cincinnati -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a Final Request for Proposal (RFP), for support services at the Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center (TWPC) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The total estimated value of the contract is $100 Million - $300 Million.  The period of performance will be 5-years, with a three-year base period and one, two-year option period.
 
A Draft RFP was released July 1, 2014, requesting comments from industry.  This acquisition is a 100 percent set-aside for small businesses under North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code 562211, Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal.
 
Services under this procurement include, but are not limited to, safely and compliantly managing and operating the Oak Ridge TWPC Category II nuclear facility in support of processing EM legacy TRU waste; performing surveillance and maintenance activities; providing support to the Central Characterization Project for final certification and disposition of TRU soil and debris waste; processing of other Remote Handled/Contact Handled TRU waste originating from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and processing Nuclear Fuel Services soils.   Similar services are currently being performed with Wastren Advantage, Inc.  The current contract ends on January 16, 2015, with an option to extend the ongoing services for 6 additional months in accordance with the terms of the contract and to align with this procurement's award schedule.
 
A pre-proposal conference and site tour will be held October 28, 2014 at the Oak Ridge TWPC facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  Registration and additional information regarding the site tour will be included in the final RFP and posted to http://twpc.oro.doe.gov/
 
 
Nuclear Weapons: Some Actions Have Been Taken to Address Challenges with the Uranium Processing Facility Design
Government Accountability Office
October 10, 2014
 
What GAO Found
 
In January 2013, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) completed a review to identify the factors that contributed to the space/fit issue with the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), and identified a number of factors within both NNSA and the contractor managing the UPF design at that time. NNSA's review identified shortcomings in 1) federal oversight of the project, 2) design integration, 3) communications, and 4) the UPF contractor's management processes and procedures. For example, NNSA determined that it did not have adequate federal staff to perform effective oversight of the project, and that the design inputs for the computer model the contractor used to allocate and track space utilization within the facility were not well integrated. NNSA also found that communications shortcomings occurred because the contractor did not always provide timely notification to the NNSA project office of emerging concerns, and that the contractor's management processes and procedures did not formally identify, evaluate, or act on technical concerns in a timely manner.
 
 
DOE IG Special Report on Management Challenges
Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General
October 7, 2014
 
The Department of Energy's Inspector General released its special report on management challenges within the agency for the next fiscal year.  Those challenges include contract management, environmental cleanup, nuclear waste disposal, and stockpile stewardship.  The report does not make any specific recommendations but rather serves to highlight significant issues so the IG can work with the Department to "enhance the effectiveness of agency programs and operations."
 
 
Geophysical Classification for Munitions Response Regulatory Fact Sheet
Interstate Technology Regulatory Council
October 2014
 
Introduction
 
For decades, the Department of Defense (DOD) has produced and used military munitions for live-fire testing and training to prepare the U.S. military for combat operations. As a result, unexploded ordnance (UXO) and discarded military munitions (DMM) may be present on former ranges and former munitions operating facilities (such as production and disposal areas). Over 4,900 sites in the United States require a munitions response, with an estimated cost to complete of $13 billion and completion date of 2100.
 
To identify munitions for removal at these sites, DOD and its contractors have historically used various types of detection instruments to simply detect buried metal items. Consequently, on munitions response sites, most detected items must be uncovered and examined to determine whether they are military munitions. Typically, highly-trained, UXO-qualified personnel excavate hundreds of metal items for each munition recovered. Given the costs associated with this inefficiency, only limited acreage can be addressed with existing resources and budgets.
 
 
Demolition of K-31 building underway
The Oak Ridger
October 13, 2014
 
Demolition of the K-31 Building at Oak Ridge's East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) began last week, marking the removal of the fourth of five gaseous diffusion buildings at the former uranium enrichment site.
 
Demolition of the K-31 Building at Oak Ridge's East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) began last week, marking the removal of the fourth of five gaseous diffusion buildings at the former uranium enrichment site.
 
The two-story building covers 750,000 square feet and spans a 17-acre footprint, according to a Department of Energy news release. The K-31 facility began operations in 1951, and it was used to enrich uranium for defense and commercial purposes until it was shut down in 1985. In 2005, EM removed most of the hazardous materials from the building's interior.
 
"This project is possible because of the project managers and crews that completed the K-25 Demolition Project under budget and ahead of schedule," said Sue Cange, acting manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (EM). "DOE and UCOR have established a model partnership that is allowing us to maintain momentum, complete additional cleanup work, and retain skilled workers."
 
URS/CH2M Oak Ridge LLC (UCOR), EM's cleanup contractor for the Oak Ridge Reservation, is responsible for demolishing the facility. The company prepared it for demolition this past summer by conducting asbestos abatement, removing the facility's exterior transite paneling, disconnecting the building's power sources, and completing pollution prevention efforts, such as filling interior and exterior storm drains.
 
EM and UCOR worked together to accelerate K-31's demolition five months ahead of its original proposed baseline schedule. The early start was achieved through EM's oversight and the hard work and safety focus of UCOR's skilled workforce, supporting subcontractors, and labor partners.
 
"Demolishing K-31 will bring us another step closer to our Vision 2016 initiative -- removal of all gaseous diffusion facilities from ETTP by 2016," said Ken Rueter, UCOR president and project manager. "Achieving this vision will mark the first-ever complete cleanup of a gaseous diffusion plant and facilities. 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."
 
Once the K-31 demolition is completed next year, the 383,000-square-foot K-27 Building will be the only remaining gaseous diffusion building at ETTP. It is scheduled for demolition in 2015.
 
Under DOE's reindustrialization program, property at ETTP is being transferred to the private sector as the agency works to make the site a private sector industrial park. Cleanup at the site is paving the way to achieve DOE's goal and creating a safer environment.
 
 
Washington Closure Hanford pursues an uneven restoration around reactors
Yakima Herald
October 12, 2014
 
KENNEWICK, Wash. -- The landscape near Hanford's former C Reactor might look mostly flat from a distance, but get up close and there are small ridges, indentations and rock outcroppings.
 
That's just what James Bernhard likes. He's a wildlife biologist and the natural resources lead for Washington Closure Hanford.
 
"Engineers like things square and flat," he said.
 
But not Bernhard.
 
He's made sure the heavy equipment used to fill what was essentially an open pit mine near C Reactor has not left the ground too tidy.
 
Washington Closure is in the midst of a major backfill campaign, filling up the holes dug to remove contamination at the nuclear reservation as much of the environmental cleanup at Hanford along the Columbia River nears completion.
 
During the past 20 months, workers under a DelHur Industries subcontract placed 3 million tons of backfill. That's enough to fill an area the size of a football field 900 feet high, or about one and a half times the height of the Space Needle in Seattle, said Ron Morris, Washington Closure manager for backfilling in the former reactor areas.
 
Workers have dug massive holes near C, D and DR reactors to chase chromium contamination in the soil down to 85 feet deep. The hole near the D and DR reactors stretches across the size of more than seven football fields.
 
At N Reactor, removal of contaminated soil left 98 waste sites that had to be refilled.
 
It's Bernhard's goal for the finished backfill at those sites to mimic nature, not a soccer field.
 
"Something flat has much less potential real estate," he said.
 
A naturally undulating, landscape with rocks provides areas with shade for plants and animals, he said, and provides shelter from the Mid-Columbia winds. It catches seeds, helping them to take root rather than being blown away. It provides places for small animals, like mice and rabbits, to hide from predators, such as coyotes. And it helps hold moisture better than flat surfaces, where wind evaporation is greater.
 
The majority of Hanford land is planned to be used for preservation and conservation as cleanup is completed.
 
It's shrub-steppe habitat, which has been described as one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the nation, said Paula Call of the Department of Energy Site Stewardship Division.
 
The about 15 million acres of shrub-steppe that once covered much of Eastern Washington has given way to agriculture, leaving just 5 million acres. Only three large tracts remain -- the Yakama Nation reservation, the Army's Yakima Training Center and the Hanford nuclear reservation.
 
"The department does recognize the ecological value of the Hanford site," Call said.
 
But DOE and Washington Closure also found ways to reduce costs as they backfill large areas.
 
That has included backfilling some areas to just 86 percent, when acceptable to Hanford regulators. Some sites, including those near reactors, still must be filled to 100 percent.
 
Historically, each reactor had a borrow area to provide dirt for construction, such as building roads. Now those borrow pits are part of Hanford Reach National Monument land along the south side of the Columbia River, and DOE's goal is to remove as little additional soil from them as possible.
 
Leaving other areas a little shallower than before cleanup begins means less fill soil has to be dug up at borrow areas near each reactor and hauled to backfill sites.
 
Washington Closure also is using uncontaminated debris for some of the fill to reduce the need for borrow area dirt. It has used concrete and steel from former Hanford service buildings and the metal rails from railroad tracks as fill material.
 
That saves the cost of loading out and hauling the material to Hanford's central landfill, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. And it helps conserve space in the landfill, which has been expanded several times across shrub-steppe habitat.
 
In some places, including between N Reactor and the Columbia River, crews put in stakes to show others how deep they should place fill soil in different areas to create the final contoured landfill.
 
Heavy equipment operators are told just to leave dirt in piles, and then the last step of sculpting the ground is done as vegetation is planted.
 
Work has been completed on the largest single backfill site at Hanford, the deep dig near C Reactor.
 
"It was one big soup bowl," Bernhard said. "It was the ugliest thing you ever saw."
 
The land is starting to return to a more natural state. A little more than 100 acres have been seeded with native grasses and planted with 52,000 big sage, spiny hopsage and antelope bitterbrush grown from seeds collected at Hanford.
 
Crews have finished backfilling near N Reactor, and they now are working on the area near the D and DR reactors, the site of another dig down to 85 feet.
 
Workers will seed the area near N Reactor late this fall or in early spring.
 
"I'm thrilled with what Washington Closure Hanford has done," Call said. "It leaves the land in better ecological shape than when it started."
 
 
Health benefit information meeting set for ex-Hanford workers 
Yakima Herald-Republic
October 9, 2014
 
YAKIMA, Wash . -- The Cold War Patriots will hold two meetings in Yakima next week to provide health benefit information to former Hanford workers.
 
The group is a national nonprofit organization representing nuclear weapons-complex workers and uranium miners who sacrificed their health in service to the country, according to the group's website. 
 
The meetings will be held at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Oct. 16 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 401 E. Yakima Ave.
 
There are government programs available for workers affected by radiation or other toxic exposure, such as the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act and the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but navigating these programs can be a challenge. 
 
The Cold War Patriots aim to help former workers and their families learn about the benefits available to them as well as get involved with others dealing with similar issues.
 
For more information, visit the group's website at www.coldwarpatriots.org.
 
 
A Book A Week: The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea 
Isthmus Daily
October 8, 2014
 
Historical fiction comes in two basic flavors: the kind that teaches you about history as you read it (e.g., The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, 1008 pages about building a 12th century cathedral), and the kind that is more opaque, where the history, while important, is not so spelled out. I like both kinds, but I often get more of a kick out of the second type, especially when the historical details intrigue me enough to go off and read more on my own, later.
 
The Wives of Los Alamos is definitely in the second category. In spare prose, author TaraShea Nesbit tells the story of the community of scientists and their families who lived and worked in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the 1940s, where the scientists developed the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 
Most of the scientists were civilian men, formerly university professors, many of them with families and children. The U.S. government moved them to New Mexico where they worked for years under top secret conditions. Their families were kept in the dark about the nature of their work, and everyone's contact with family members and friends from outside the community was strictly monitored. In some cases, where a scientist was well known within the field, names were changed as well. The restricted nature of their lives meant that the women, especially, formed close bonds with one another as they attempted to create a semblance of normal life in the isolated desert community.
 
Nesbit reinforces the close ties among the women by writing this novel in third person plural, which I thought would bother me, but which didn't. The wives speak as a group, about their children, the landscape, and the difficulties of being cut off from extended family. They reveal both the petty (whose government-issue house has a coveted bathtub) and the frightening aspects of their lives (what, exactly, are their husbands working on? Something very dangerous).
 
Real historical figures inhabit this novel (Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr) but their influence is minimal. It's not the kind of historical novel where you play "guess who this character is?" It's more diffuse than that, because of the third person narrative voice and also because it's mostly about the wives, whose names we don't know anyway. After I finished reading it I read the Wikipedia page about the Manhattan Project. In a book club primer, Nesbit recommends another book, The Girls of Atomic City, by Denise Kiernan. This nonfiction title is also about the women who worked in the secret Oak Ridge, Tennessee uranium separating plant. Now I want to read that too.
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