ECA Update: November 18, 2014
Published: Tue, 11/18/14
ECA Board Elects New Executive Committee
Last week, the ECA Board met to elect a new Executive Committee for the next year. The gathering took place during the annual Intergovernmental Meeting with the Department of Energy in New Orleans. The new Executive Committee members were all nominated and acclaimed unanimously:
Chair Smith and Vice Chair Young served on the Executive Committee during the last year; Treasurer Henderson and Secretary Woody joined the leadership team after careful evaluation and selection by the Nominating Committee. In the coming weeks and months, the Committee will be tasked with approving a new draft of ECA policies and overseeing preparations for peer exchanges across the country, including our February meeting in Washington, D.C.
Outgoing Chair Mayor Tom Beehan and Treasurer Fran Berting were honored with lifetime ECA membership by the Board. Both will be leaving elected office this year and we are all pleased to have worked with them for so long and look forward to their continued participation and advocacy on behalf of ECA communities.
Thank you to all who attended the Intergovernmental Meeting last week and welcome to the new Executive Committee. If you have any questions about the Board Meeting or the Intergovernmental Meeting please feel free to reach out to Devon Hill at devon@energyca.org.
WIPP Update
Department of Energy
Drill Program Ensures Emergency Preparedness
As part of its Corrective Action Plans in response to the Accident Investigation Board reports for the February fire and radiological events, the WIPP Emergency Response Organization (ERO) has undergone extensive change over the past eight months. In addition to adding new personnel, there have been major revisions to procedures and checklists and a robust Drill and Exercise Program was developed to ensure WIPP personnel are prepared to respond to any future emergencies.
The WIPP Drill and Exercise Program is a critical tool for preparing and testing the WIPP workforce, first-responders, Central Monitoring Room staff, Mine Rescue Teams, Emergency Operations Center staff, and member of the Joint Information Center (JIC), as well as functional groups like Radiological Control Technicians. Drills allow hands-on training in a controlled environment to informally test the adequacy of emergency response plans, procedures, equipment, and systems.
Members of the WIPP Joint Information Center practice responding to a mock event during a drill held on November 12.
WIPP's ERO has been conducting drills on a weekly basis since April. On November 12, the site conducted a major drill involving several external organizations and more than three dozen WIPP personnel. The drill scenario included a full activation of the WIPP EOC and the JIC to ensure all participants had the opportunity to demonstrate their training while responding to a simulated underground event. Drill scenarios have included a full evacuation of the WIPP underground facility and responding to radiological incidents and a variety of emergencies on the surface of the facility.
In December, WIPP will conduct a full-scale exercise to demonstrate and evaluate the ability of the Department of Energy and the Carlsbad Field Office site-level Emergency Response Organization to recognize, respond to, contain, and mitigate an operational emergency at the site.
Community meeting scheduled
December 4 - The City of Carlsbad and DOE will co-host its Town Hall meeting featuring updates on WIPP recovery activities. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday at 5:30 p.m. Location: Carlsbad City Council Chambers, 101 N. Halagueno Street. Live streaming of the meeting can be seen at http://new.livestream.com/rrv/.
Prepared Remarks of Chairman Allison M. Macfarlane at the National Press Club
NRC News
Good afternoon, and thank you for the kind introduction. I appreciate the invitation to be here today to talk about the issues on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's plate and reflect on some of the accomplishments and challenges of my tenure.
First, let me review some of our accomplishments and then I'll take a look forward to upcoming issues for the Commission.
First Impressions
When I came to the NRC in 2012, I was eager to work with my colleagues and the NRC staff, but unsure what I would face. The agency was going through a tumultuous time in which relationships within the Commission, and between the staff and the Commission, were strained. It had also been just over a year since the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident, and the staff was moving ahead on pertinent lessons for U.S. industry.
In addition, just weeks before my arrival, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded a major rule on spent fuel storage at reactor sites, known as the "Waste Confidence Rule," which would require the NRC to undertake a substantial rulemaking and suspend certain licensing actions. I should also mention that the Federal Government as a whole was, in the context of the sequestration debate, experiencing budget challenges. In short, I knew I was walking into an environment where there was a lot of work to do and limited resources with which to do it.
I also had my own priorities and objectives in mind as I began my tenure, and I wanted to use the benefit of my knowledge and prior experience to enhance and strengthen the NRC's important work. From my time on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which set a new strategy for dealing with the country's nuclear waste, I had seen the benefit of effective public engagement. I was determined to approach my Chairmanship with a commitment to openness and transparency. As a nuclear waste expert, I had long believed that the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle - everything that occurs once spent fuel is removed from a reactor vessel - does not receive the attention and respect it needs. And as an academic, I intended to champion a broad-minded, inclusive approach in the agency's decision-making.
From my first day on the job, the NRC staff impressed me with their technical skill, their commitment to the agency's mission, and their sense of community. After visiting my first few reactors, I was impressed by our Resident Inspectors and their role at the facilities we regulate.
I take great pride in the tremendous work the NRC staff accomplished during the two and a half years that followed. Chairman Macfarlane's full remarks can be found by following the link provided above.
NRC Extends Construction Deadline for MOX Fuel Fabrication Plant NRC News
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission signed an order Nov. 13 extending the completion deadline for a mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facility in South Carolina. Shaw AREVA MOX Services will have an additional 10 years, or until March 30, 2025, to finish building the facility at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in Aiken.
MOX Services asked for the extension in May after a number of factors delayed construction, including lower than requested annual funding from Congress and delays in the delivery of components and key construction activities. The NRC issued the original 10-year construction authorization March 30, 2005. The extension does not expand the scope of work.
The NRC published an environmental assessment Oct. 23 that found no significant environmental impact would result from extending the authorization. NRC staff also found that MOX Services has shown good cause to extend the deadline for completion.
The order also reflects some administrative changes to the construction authorization, including a change in the licensee's name to CB&I AREVA MOX Services to reflect Chicago Bridge & Iron's acquisition of The Shaw Group in 2013. That change does not reflect any change in control of the company, management, operation or security. The order also removes a list of submittals that had been incorporated as references in the construction authorization, but have now been incorporated into the application.
The MOX fabrication facility is a major component of the United States' program to dispose of surplus plutonium taken from nuclear weapons by mixing it with uranium and burning it as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors.
'Clearly lacks the experience': Vitter calls for full hearing on Obama NRC nominee
Washington Examiner
Sen. David Vitter doesn't want Sen. Harry Reid to stack the Nuclear Regulatory Commission against using Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a waste repository.
The Louisiana Republican, who is the ranking member of his party on the Senate Environment and Public Works Panel, which oversees the nation's nuclear facilities, opposes President Obama's nomination of Jeff Baran to fill a full term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Baran, who had been serving a temporary term, is a former top aide to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., a staunch opponent of nuclear power.
Vitter believes Baran's nomination will increase the changes that Reid ally Stephen Burns will be nominated the next NRC chairman.
Reid, of Nevada, has only a few remaining weeks before he loses the Senate gavel to Republicans. He has long fought efforts to keep the nuclear waste dump out of Yucca Mountain, a remote desert area 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Confirming Baran before the end of his rein as majority leader is likely a top priority for Reid and would be fairly easy to accomplish, since new Senate rules allow Democrats to confirm Obama's appointees with just 51 votes.
Vitter is calling for a full committee hearing on Baran, who he said is inexperienced and only visited a nuclear energy plant for the first time last summer.
"Baran clearly lacks the experience," Vitter said.
Vitter said he believes Reid is backing Baran, "likely due to the role he is expected to play in continuing to undermine the Yucca Mountain project."
GOP takeover means new push on Yucca, nuke waste
Las Vegas Review-Journal
WASHINGTON -- The Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's elections is giving new hope to those who see reviving the mothballed Yucca Mountain site as a solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem.
The election returns have energized pro-Yucca interests who believe Sen. Harry Reid's demotion to the minority saps the clout he has wielded to hold Democrats in line against the project opposed by many Nevadans.
But others say Reid still has ample power to keep the repository from being resurrected. And backing up the Nevadan is the Obama administration that pulled the plug on Yucca Mountain in 2010 even after the government spent $15 billion to study whether the site could be safe to store tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel.
More likely, some say, Yucca Mountain might end up being used as a bargaining chip to get other stalled legislation out of Congress that would put the government on a new path to address a thorny environmental issue -- disposal of highly radioactive waste -- that has stymied the United States since the dawn of the nuclear age.
"This change that happened does bring opportunities, how significant we don't know yet," said Lake Barrett, retired former top manager of the Yucca project. "It's a step in the right direction toward the nation doing something rather than doing nothing."
NEW SENATE ENERGY LEADERS
The Senate flip in January is expected to place pro-repository Republicans atop committees with jurisdiction over energy.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who called for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete licensing hearings on Yucca after an agency staff report last month concluded the site could be safe, is in line to head the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who once called Yucca Mountain "the most studied piece of real estate on earth," is expected to take over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a strong Reid ally.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who last year said Yucca Mountain would be a top priority if Republicans won the Senate, is expected to become chairman of the important Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water that sets spending levels for nuclear projects.
But as Yucca Mountain remained on the back burner in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Alexander and Murkowski also sponsored an alternative bill with Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Dianne Feinstein of California that sought to pave a new path on nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Administration act of 2013 would create an independent agency that would seek volunteer states to host a repository, as well as short-term "interim storage" sites that would consolidate nuclear waste now scattered at more than 100 reactors around the country.
But it too has been stalled.
In the House, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., a leading member in favor of the repository as chairman of the subcommittee on environment and the economy, said the elections gave Yucca Mountain backers new impetus.
"We will continue to press the administration to finish its licensing of Yucca Mountain. With willing partners in the Senate, we are hopeful we can work together next year to ensure we have a common-sense nuclear waste strategy in place and that a permanent repository will be completed," Shimkus said in a statement.
CLUES FROM LAME DUCK?
The post-election lame-duck session of Congress that gets underway this week might provide some clues as to the road ahead for Yucca Mountain.
Lawmakers must pass legislation to keep the government running beyond Dec. 11. With Reid still in charge of the Senate during lame duck, any spending bill that emerges likely will contain no money for Yucca Mountain.
But what's not known yet is how long that bill will cover -- whether it will fund the government until the spring, or until later in 2015. Because at that point, Republicans will be in charge of spending and that's when there might be fresh action on Yucca.
In years past, Republicans who control the House would include Yucca funding in the annual energy and water spending bill only to have it pulled out in the Senate at Reid's insistence.
Now, "there will be some kind of negotiations between the Senate and House, both controlled by Republicans, that will encourage funding for Yucca Mountain," said Tim Frazier, senior adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Frazier, a former nuclear program manager at the Department of Energy and chief administrative officer of the nuclear waste blue ribbon commission, said a compromise also might fund a pilot project for short-term waste storage that has been put forward in the Senate by Feinstein and Alexander.
"It's going to end up a win-win for the consolidated storage proponents out there and for the Yucca Mountain proponents that are out there," Frazier said.
But even if Congress appropriates money, it "doesn't mean Yucca Mountain is back," Frazier said. The Department of Energy had made clear it does not want the program and is unlikely to spend much money on it, he said.
"It's hard to do anything with a project that the administration doesn't want," Frazier said. "There is not even a whiff, an aroma, of a champion in the Department of Energy for Yucca Mountain, at the senior levels."
Barrett suggested Congress give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy a relatively small $100 million to conduct license hearings through which it might be determined whether the Yucca site can be operated safely.
The license hearings, which would be conducted in a courtroom setting before a panel of administrative judges, would allow Nevada to present its case that the repository cannot be operated safely, and that it poses a risk to the environment and the state's economy.
Such a proceeding could take at least three years, maybe more, Barrett said. Only at the conclusion, and if the regulators judge Yucca Mountain to be suitable, could the issue be brought to whoever is president at the time for a fresh decision whether to move ahead.
"Let the next president decide where we are, make the policy call at that point, and then you can go back at it big time," Barrett said.
NEVADA POLITICS AT PLAY
Reid continues to state that Yucca Mountain will not be revived as long as he is in Congress, and as long as Obama is around, and perhaps even the president after that
"Yucca Mountain is gone," Reid told reporters in Nevada last month. "For someone to talk about it being restarted all you have to do is talk to Barack Obama, that won't happen. And I am sure his successor will feel the same way."
Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who sits on the Senate Energy Committee, said he too "will continue to defend Nevada from the efforts of outsiders to dump nuclear waste in our state against our will."
But Nevadans in the 4th Congressional District on Tuesday elected Republican Cresent Hardy to Congress, and he has said he would favor storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain if it could be determined safe.
"I don't think there's a better place for it," Hardy said at an April 3 candidate forum in Mesquite. "My belief is if it passes all the criteria of safety of the state of Nevada, I think it's a great area for it. I believe that it actually can create many new jobs in the state of Nevada. ... If Nye County wants it then we start moving forward. I believe it's a great spot for economic development."
Hardy would be the first Nevada member of Congress in recent history to declare himself open to a Yucca repository. In the state's new delegation, Reid, Heller and Democratic Rep. Dina Titus are against it. The positions of Republicans Joe Heck and Mark Amodei are more nuanced -- they oppose a repository but say they would be open to utilizing the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas for nuclear waste-related research and activities.
Yucca Mountain supporters in Congress are expected to embrace Hardy and point to him as the face of Nevadans who favor a repository but whose voices, they say, are drowned out by state leaders.
But playing up Yucca Mountain also carries a risk for Republicans. Reid is up for re-election, and on Friday was declared by Washington Post political analysts as the second most likely to be defeated in 2016.
If the GOP believes Reid can be knocked off, do they want to revive Yucca Mountain as a campaign issue in a state where the Republican candidate, if it is Gov. Brian Sandoval or someone else, also might be opposed to the project?
Barrett said 2016 could test how much Nevadans care about Yucca Mountain.
"How high is this issue on the minds of Nevada voters?" Barrett asked. "How potent and powerful could it be in 2016? I honestly don't know."
LANL officials downplayed waste's dangers even after leak
Sante Fe New Mexican
In the summer of 2012, Gov. Susana Martinez visited the hilltop facilities of Los Alamos National Laboratory to commemorate a milestone. The lab, under an agreement with the state, had just shipped its 1,000th truckload of Cold War-era nuclear waste from the grounds of Los Alamos to a salt cavern deep under the Southern New Mexico desert.
The achievement meant the lab was well on its way to meeting a June 30, 2014, deadline imposed by Martinez to remove radioactive gloves, machinery and other equipment left over from decades of nuclear weapons research.
For Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private consortium that operates the lab, the stakes were high. Meeting the deadline would help it secure an extension of its $2.2 billion annual contract from the U.S. Department of Energy.
But the following summer, workers packaging the waste came across a batch that was extraordinarily acidic, making it unsafe for shipping. The lab's guidelines called for work to shut down while the batch underwent a rigid set of reviews to determine how to treat it, a time-consuming process that jeopardized the lab's goal of meeting the deadline.
Instead, the lab and its various contractors took shortcuts in treating the acidic nuclear waste, adding neutralizer and a wheat-based organic kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The combination turned the waste into a potential bomb that one lab chemist later characterized as akin to plastic explosives, according to a six-month investigation by The New Mexican.
The lab then shipped a 55-gallon drum of the volatile material 330 miles to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, southeast of Carlsbad. Documents accompanying the drum, which were supposed to include a detailed description of its contents, were deeply flawed. They made no mention of the acidity or the neutralizer, and they mischaracterized the kitty litter as a clay-based material -- not the more combustible organic variety that most chemists would have recognized as hazardous if mixed with waste laden with nitrate salts, according to interviews and a review of thousands of pages of documents and internal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
On Feb. 14, with the campaign to clear the waste from Los Alamos more than 90 percent complete, the drum's lid cracked open. Radiation leaked into the air. Temperatures in the underground chamber soared to 1,600 degrees, threatening dozens of nearby drums. At least 20 workers were contaminated with what federal officials have described as low levels of radiation -- though one worker has filed a lawsuit saying his health has drastically deteriorated due to radiation exposure.
The facility, meanwhile, remains shut down as an estimated $500 million recovery effort expected to last several years gets underway, leaving thousands of containers of nuclear waste destined for WIPP stranded at national laboratories across the country.
Documents and internal emails show that even after the radiation leak, lab officials downplayed the dangers of the waste -- even to the Carlsbad managers whose staff members were endangered by its presence -- and withheld critical information from regulators and WIPP officials investigating the leak. Internal emails, harshly worded at times, convey a tone of exasperation with LANL from WIPP personnel, primarily employees of the Department of Energy and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates the repository.
Taken together, the documents provide a window into a culture of oversight at the lab that, in the race to clean up the waste, had so broken down that small missteps sometimes led to systemic problems.
Even before the waste was treated at Los Alamos, mistakes had been made that could have been instrumental in causing the accident at WIPP. Emails between WIPP contractors involved in the leak investigation indicate that something as simple as a typographical error in a revision of LANL's procedural manual for processing waste containing nitrate salts may have precipitated a switch from inorganic clay kitty litter to the organic variety.
And for two years preceding the February incident, the lab refused to allow inspectors conducting annual permitting audits for the New Mexico Environment Department inside the facility where waste was treated. Only since the radiation leak has the Environment Department demanded that it go inside the facility for inspections.
The waste container that ultimately burst would not have met federal transportation standards to get on the road from Los Alamos to Carlsbad, nor would it have been accepted at WIPP, if its true ingredients had been reported by the lab. Investigators have zeroed in on those ingredients as the possible cause of the chemical reaction that led to the radiation leak, although the exact catalyst for the reaction remains a mystery.
The National Nuclear Security Administration's Accident Investigation Board, an arm of the Energy Department, is expected to soon release findings of its investigation on the cause of the radiation leak. And the New Mexico Environment Department is set to begin levying fines against LANL that some lab officials expect could total $10 million or more.
As its report takes shape, the federal board is exploring what role LANL contractors' profit motive and the rush to meet the deadline imposed by the state Environment Department -- a key objective necessary to fully extend its lucrative contract -- played in the missteps that caused the leak.
"We expect that that report will address this very specific question," Mark Whitney, the Department of Energy's acting assistant secretary of environmental management, told reporters during a teleconference in late September.
A patented explosive
More than three months after the leak, LANL chemist Steve Clemmons compared the ingredients of the drum, labeled Waste Drum 68660, to a database of federal patents and found that together, the drum's contents match the makeup of patented plastic, water-gel and slurry explosives, according to a memo.
"All of the required components included in the patent claims would be present," Clemmons wrote in the May 21 memo.
Personnel at WIPP were oblivious to Clemmons' discovery for nearly a week after he made it. Only after a Department of Energy employee leaked a copy of the memo to a colleague in Carlsbad the night before a planned entry into the room that held the ruptured drum did WIPP get word that it could be dealing with explosive components inside Waste Drum 68660.
"Have you heard that we at the lab have confirmed that the material used in the drum DOES create an explosive mixture????" James O'Neil of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration wrote May 27 to Hung-Cheng Chiou, who works at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office.
In a follow-up email, O'Neil clarified what he meant: "A letter from the LANL chemistry group here ... stated that putting the type of kitty litter of sorts mixed with the nitrate salts created a patented explosive mixture."
"Wow, that is the news to me," Chiou wrote back. "How can the explosive mixture be in the drum content that could be sent to WIPP?"
O'Neil expressed his own surprise that such a dangerous load was allowed to be shipped to WIPP.
"Not sure how [that] type drum, which does not meet WIPP [waste acceptance criteria] even got shipped to you guys," he wrote.
From there, word of the memo reached managers at WIPP.
"I am appalled that LANL didn't provide us this information!" Dana Bryson, deputy manager of the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office, wrote in an email to WIPP-based field office manager Jose Franco and others when she learned of the memo.
LANL officials, in a written statement from a spokesman, said scientific testing has eliminated the explosive nature of the waste as the cause of the radiation leak. Numerous experiments trying to replicate the conditions in Waste Drum 68660 have failed to yield the same result, officials said.
But Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog organization that tracks activities at the lab, said LANL should have recognized the potentially volatile mix it had concocted before shipping it to WIPP, rather than three months after it burst.
"It took only seconds with Google to find explosives patents" when the foremost ingredients in Waste Drum 68660 were punched in, he said.
On May 27, when they learned of the memo about patented explosives that the lab hadn't shared with them, supervisors at WIPP abandoned plans for the next day to sample the area where the breach occurred, fearing it was too dangerous.
"In a phone call with LANL, they indicated that there is a possibility that any sampling of the kitty litter/drum contents could cause another event," David Freeman, Nuclear Waste Partnership's chief nuclear engineer, wrote in an email.
Bryson demanded answers from Peter Maggiore, the National Nuclear Security Administration's assistant manager for environmental programs at LANL.
"We have a formal letter on LANL letterhead implying there is a real and present danger in the WIPP underground," Bryson wrote. "This is contrary to everything I have heard from LANL on this issue. The email you sent from LANL implied there might be more of these hidden yet formal warnings."
Chiou, too, was livid when he learned that the Los Alamos-based employee who first alerted WIPP personnel to the threat was reprimanded by the Department of Energy's Los Alamos Site Office for sharing that information.
"This is direct contradiction of DOE/NNSA policy and what we believed in," Chiou wrote to Franco, Bryson and others. "It is most important that we have the information (regardless official or unofficial) so that we as [the Carlsbad Field Office of the Energy Department] can make better informed decisions as best we could. However, it may not work that way as it seems. ... I hope that we can do better in getting relevant information from LANL so we can make a better decision for the WIPP project."
After a conference call with LANL officials, WIPP decision-makers on May 30 sent workers in protective suits into the room to collect samples. But a June 17 report by LANL personnel based at WIPP found the intense underground flare may have destabilized up to 55 more drums of waste that were in close proximity to Waste Drum 68660 when it ruptured, calling into question whether they, too, had become poised to burst.
"[The high heat event] may have dried out some of the unreacted oxidizer-organic mixtures increasing their potential for spontaneous reaction," the report said. "The dehydration of the fuel-oxidizer mixtures caused by the heating of the drums is recognized as a condition known to increase the potential for reaction."
Keeping secrets
Frustrations over LANL's reluctance to share what it knew about Waste Drum 68660 had been percolating at WIPP long before the discovery of the memo that suggested the drum contained all the ingredients of a patented plastic explosive.
A May 5 email between WIPP employee James Willison and federal contractor Fran Williams suggested LANL was reluctant to acknowledge the most basic details about what Waste Drum 68660 held.
"LANL used a wheat-based kitty litter rather than clay-based kitty litter as a stabilizer," Willison wrote. "They fessed up after we nailed down the general area. ... At least now we know."
"Wow," Williams responded. "How bad is that?"
On paper, the volatile combination of contents inside the drum that burst were not evident to experts who reviewed them because they were not included in the list of ingredients Los Alamos is required to generate for regulatory purposes and to assure the waste is stable enough to be accepted at WIPP.
In the case of Waste Drum 68660, that report, known as acceptable knowledge, was woefully incomplete and portrayed the mix as far more stable than it truly was, according to the emails.
In documents filed with the New Mexico Environment Department before the accident, LANL reported that the waste in the drum that would later burst "is stable and will not undergo violent chemical change without detonating," and "there is no indication that the waste contains explosive materials, and it is not capable of detonation or explosive reaction. The materials in the waste stream are therefore not reactive wastes."
Los Alamos' description of the drum's contents was so flawed that post-accident reviews by WIPP personnel resulted in a revised acceptable knowledge report in May that included everything that had been left out of the original.
"Be sure and read the AK [acceptable knowledge] description ... it assumed that the absorbent was clay based," Freeman wrote to another waste specialist at WIPP.
"A neutralizing agent was used [at LANL] to obtain a neutral pH -- though not in the procedure and not documented," Freeman wrote in another message.
A WIPP report that followed stated: "These chemicals not being considered could lead to an incomplete AK record which could be a violation of the WIPP hazardous waste facility permit requirements."
Yet another WIPP briefing paper suggests that even though the contents inside Waste Drum 68660 came from an unusually acidic batch of waste with a pH of zero, appropriate handling at LANL could have mitigated the threat, but the use of the wrong neutralizer failed to reconcile the problem and in fact exacerbated it. And in the lab's description of the waste before it shipped to WIPP, its uniquely high acidity was not reported.
"If the manufacturer's directions were followed, the liquid would have been neutralized to a pH of approximately 7," Michael Papp, a waste composition specialist at Nuclear Waste Partnership, wrote to managers for the contractor. "However, the final pH of the liquid was not included in the repackaging paperwork."
A costly typo
In a damning report issued in October, the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General chided LANL and its waste packaging subcontractor EnergySolutions for the change from clay-based to organic kitty litter and the use of an acid neutralizer.
"This action may have led to an adverse chemical reaction within the drums resulting in serious safety implications," the report said, referring to the litter change. A lab spokesman said LANL officials recognize deficiencies in the lab's safety processes were spotlighted by the disaster at WIPP.
But LANL has never publicly acknowledged the reason why it switched from clay-based litter to the organic variety believed to be the fuel that fed the intense heat. In internal emails, nuclear waste specialists pondered several theories about the reason for the change in kitty litters before settling on an almost comically simplistic conclusion that has never been publicly discussed: A typographical error in a revision to a LANL policy manual for repackaging waste led to a wholesale shift from clay litter to the wheat-based variety.
The revision, approved by LANL, took effect Aug. 1, 2012, mere days after the governor's celebratory visit to Los Alamos, and explicitly directed waste packagers at the lab to "ENSURE an organic absorbent (kitty litter) is added to the waste" when packaging drums of nitrate salt.
"Does it seem strange that the procedure was revised to specifically require organic kitty litter to process nitrate salt drums?" Freeman, Nuclear Waste Partnership's chief nuclear engineer at WIPP, asked a colleague in a May 28 email.
Freeman went on to echo some of the possible reasons for the change bandied about in earlier emails, such as the off-putting dust or perfumed scents characteristic of clay litter. But his colleague, Mark Pearcy, a member of the team that reviews waste to ensure it is acceptable to be stored at WIPP, offered a surprising explanation.
"General consensus is that the 'organic' designation was a typo that wasn't caught," he wrote, implying that the directions should have called for inorganic litter.
Officials at LANL declined to comment about whether a typographical error led to the switch to organic kitty litter.
Whatever the reason, LANL began treating waste with assorted varieties of organic kitty litter as early as September 2012, spawning thousands of drums of waste that hold the same organic threat that's being eyed as a contributing factor in the rupture of Waste Drum 68660.
Organic kitty litter may have been mixed in up to 5,565 containers of waste at LANL starting in September 2012 that were incorrectly labeled as holding inorganic litter, according to an assessment conducted by WIPP personnel.
Notes from a May conference call with federal regulators contained in the emails show LANL's use of organic kitty litter defied clear instructions from WIPP personnel to use the clay type.
"[WIPP contractors] authorized 'X' for use and LANL used 'Y,' " Todd Sellmer, transportation and packaging manager at Nuclear Waste Partnership, wrote in an email documenting the call.
Lax state oversight
The push to speed up nuclear waste removal from Los Alamos began after the June 2011 Las Conchas Fire. The blaze, the largest in New Mexico history, scorched 156,000 acres in the Jemez Mountains and came within a few miles of LANL's Area G, where 3,327.5 cubic feet of waste from decades of nuclear weapons development was stored.
Worried that another fire would breach the compound, the state Environment Department and lab officials agreed to a June 30, 2014, deadline to clear The Hill of waste and ship it to WIPP.
Meeting the goal meant big money for Los Alamos National Security, the private company formed eight years ago by Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services, URS Energy and Construction, and the University of California to operate LANL. The deadline was built into the federal grading scale that determines the contractor's fee, and more importantly, whether LANS receives extensions of its $2.2 billion-a-year contract to operate the lab at Los Alamos. LANS already had been denied a one-year extension when it failed to meet goals associated with progress toward making several dilapidated facilities operable.
But since the deadline was set, nuclear watchdog groups have publicly criticized Gov. Martinez's Cabinet secretary for the Environment Department, Ryan Flynn, for relaxing the frequency of waste drum inspections during LANL's cleanup campaign. Emails obtained by The New Mexican raise new questions about whether oversight of LANL's waste packaging activities by Flynn's department was sufficient.
Department inspectors are required to conduct annual audits of the lab to ensure it meets state permitting guidelines. But in 2012 and 2013, Environment Department officials say, LANL warned them to stay out of the waste handling facility because they did not have appropriate training to be around radioactive waste, according to emails.
Jim Winchester, a spokesman for the Environment Department, said the state's audit team didn't insist on entering because it was "working on higher priority duties at the time that mandated our attention."
Only since the disaster at WIPP has the department insisted on getting access to the site where Waste Drum 68660 was processed.
Flynn, meanwhile, has expressed similar frustrations with WIPP officials over what he has called LANL's reluctance to share what it knows about the contents of the drum. He has made clear that the Environment Department is poised to levy steep penalties against the lab's permit.
"The more we investigate, the more we're discovering at Los Alamos," Flynn told The New Mexican in a September interview.
It's still unclear what impact the Feb. 14 leak will have on LANS and its contract, which runs through Oct. 1, 2017, according to federal records. Four managers overseeing the cleanup at the lab already have been replaced, and more shake-ups are underway.
Federal officials, meanwhile, estimate a yearslong recovery plan to reopen WIPP will cost at least $500 million -- a figure some critics characterize as an overly conservative guess. The financial consequences of the disaster were already becoming evident by May 7, when WIPP-based Department of Energy employee Irene Joo emailed a colleague to speculate about what had gone wrong at LANL.
She wrote: "I expect we will all pay the price."
Secret Pantex Plant building 'just really bad,' Rep. Thornberry says
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
The leaky World War II-era building is one of the Pantex Plant's oldest, most secret facilities. Dust seeps in through its doors, a resident snake keeps rodents at bay and the electrical system is outdated.
Inside, engineers test and sample high explosives to ensure they meet rigorous standards for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
"I guess one of the things that really got my attention was the working conditions, not necessarily in the bays and cells, but for the engineers and the other people who are out there. It's just really bad," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican who has visited the building and serves as vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
A government staffer who also has toured the dilapidated building in Pantex's Zone 11 said the roof leaks when it rains and water streaks dot its interior walls.
Periodically, employees must put tarps over the high-
explosives testing equipment to protect it from rain and the elements.
"In this case, I would say it's not a safety issue; we're not talking about nuclear materials," said the staffer, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. "It's just a matter of the working conditions and the risk of damaging state-of-the-art, very expensive equipment. If there was real damage, you would not be able to analyze these samples, and it would put at risk the ability of the Department of Energy to certify to the president that the current state of our nuclear weapons are safe, secure and effective."
Pantex, which assembles, modernizes and dismantles all weapons in the U.S. atomic arsenal, has about 643 buildings, 48 miles of paved roads and 461 miles of fences.
Frank Klotz, a retired Air Force general who oversees Pantex and the nation's entire nuclear weapons complex, toured Pantex recently to take stock of the installation.
"There's a part of the facility here where, quite frankly, where there are some very old buildings in which there are some issues associated with the HVAC, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, with the plumbing, with the seals on the building itself that are not the best place for our employees to work and are not the best place to put very expensive scientific diagnostic equipment," Klotz said.
"By the way, we face that across the entire nuclear security enterprise. ... A number of our buildings date back literally to the end of the Manhattan Project or at least the very early days of the Cold War."
In January, plant officials said they completed a major Pantex project, a $36 million high-pressure fire loop system that can instantly deluge nuclear weapons bays and cells with water to snuff out a fire.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a congressional watchdog agency, cited concerns about fire protection after safety officials cited fears about the potential threat of a fire and accidental high-explosive blast that could disperse plutonium and other nuclear materials into the air.
The system provides water to about 100 Pantex facilities and required nearly 20,000 feet of corrosion-resistant plastic pipe, plus fire hydrants and dozens of valves.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, Klotz said, is now finishing a new Pantex high explosives pressing facility that will modernize the plant's explosives operations.
Construction of the $65 million, 45,000-square-foot facility began in 2011, and it is expected to be operational in September 2016.
So far, the project, managed by Pantex contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security LLC and the Army Corps of Engineers, is on time and within budget, NNSA officials said.
In June, Pantex and Siemens USA completed a five-turbine, privately financed wind farm expected to provide more than 60 percent of the plant's yearly energy needs, saving an estimated $2.8 million in annual energy costs over the next 18 years.
Steve Erhart, manager of the NNSA's Nuclear Production Office that oversees Pantex and a Tennessee weapons plant, said the agency also plans to add another High Explosive Science and Engineering facility that eventually will replace other aging Pantex structures.
The NNSA, Klotz said, is taking steps to fix infrastructure throughout the weapons complex and points to a new state-of-the art Kansas City facility where nuclear weapons components are manufactured as one of the agency's recent successes.
The general said the NNSA also has built new facilities at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratories, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories near San Francisco and at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"That said, we still have an awful lot of facilities and buildings which quite frankly are old, aging and need to be replaced both to continue to ensure the safety of our people, and to ensure our ability to continue to conduct operations."
Thornberry, too, said infrastructure problems continue to mount at Pantex and across the weapons complex.
Another infrastructure issue facing Pantex is the plant's plutonium storage facilities, where thousands of radioactive cores for nuclear weapons are stored.
The NNSA recently announced plans to build new plutonium facilities at Pantex to move storage underground and reduce security costs, but those have yet to be finalized.
"I think understandably so with very limited dollars, the top priority has been the bays and the cells where the work on weapons actually takes place. Meanwhile, a bunch of other things are deteriorating," he said.
"We're having to put money into fire loops and all of that other stuff that it's just patchwork. We're doing just enough to get by."
Teachers embrace nuclear in tour of SRS
The Aiken Standard
Submitted photo SRNS Bioassay Technical Director Ronie Spencer explains to the visiting teachers the purpose of the Environmental Bioassay Laboratory at the Savannah River Site. A large group of area educators recently visited SRS to learn about nuclear-related occupations and missions.
Dozens of area educators recently participated in a "mobile seminar" while visiting major facilities at the Savannah River Site and learned about a variety of nuclear-related occupations and missions.
The site tour consisted of visits to the Savannah River National Laboratory, Bioassay Laboratory and MOX facility. It also included an extensive walking tour of the Defense Waste Processing Facility led by Savannah River Remediation personnel and other site processes, projects and facilities.
Terry Dennis, a science and math teacher at Mead Hall, said she was pleased that one of the first sessions of the tour involved one of the subject areas in her physical sciences class, which helps students understand the different types of natural radiation.
"I think this event is great because I can take information back to the classroom that's relevant to the community," she said. "I'm so appreciative, especially on a personal level.
Kim Mitchell, an employee with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Education Outreach, said the goal of the tour was to demonstrate how what's learned in the classroom today will later apply to jobs at SRS, Plant Vogtle and other nuclear corporations in the greater Aiken-Augusta area.
"We want to help teachers throughout the Central Savannah River Area enhance this area of awareness for students in our middle and high schools," she wrote.
SRNS worked with other members of the nuclear community including Mindy Mets, program manager of the Nuclear Workforce Initiative. Mets said that many don't recognize the value of nuclear-related knowledge and skills that support occupational needs found within businesses and industry. Those industries include advanced manufacturing, Homeland Security and the field of medicine.
"This tour, which is a part National Science Week, helps our teachers develop the training and education programs that are needed right here in the community," she said. "They are developing educational units not only for future scientists, engineers and nuclear physicists, but also for welders, mechanics, production operators, radiation control personnel, and many more positions." Spent Nuclear Fuel Management: Outreach Needed to Help Gain Public Acceptance for Federal Activities That Address Liability
GAO
Spent nuclear fuel--the used fuel removed from nuclear power reactors--is expected to accumulate at an average rate of about 2,200 metric tons per year in the United States. This spent nuclear fuel is mostly stored wet, submerged in pools of water. However, since pools have been reaching their capacities, owners and generators of spent nuclear fuel (typically utilities and reactor operators) have been transferring it to canisters that are placed in casks on concrete pads for dry storage--which is an expensive and time-consuming process. When operating reactors' licenses begin to expire in the 2030s, the rate of spent nuclear fuel accumulation is expected to decrease, but the amount in dry storage will increase as the pools are closed and all spent nuclear fuel is transferred to dry storage. By 2067, the currently operating reactors are expected to have generated about 139,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, nearly all of which is expected to be transferred to dry storage.
Department of Energy: Interagency Review Needed to Update U.S. Position on Enriched Uranium That Can Be Used for Tritium Production
GAO
The Department of Energy (DOE) has adhered to its practice of using only unobligated low-enriched uranium (LEU) to meet national security needs for tritium--a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used to enhance the power of U.S. nuclear weapons. LEU is considered unobligated when neither the uranium nor the technology used to enrich it carries an "obligation" from a foreign country requiring that the material only be used for peaceful purposes. These obligations are contained in international agreements to which the United States is a party. DOE has adhered to this practice by, for example, requiring in its interagency agreement for tritium production with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that TVA use only unobligated LEU as fuel in any nuclear reactor that is being used to produce tritium for national security purposes, and DOE is responsible for ensuring that TVA can obtain unobligated LEU for this purpose.
Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee
Federal Register
Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 8:30am-4:00pm
Address: Westin Crytal City, Arlington, VA 22202
Background: The Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee (NEAC), formerly the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC), was established in 1998 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to provide advice on complex scientific, technical, and policy issues that arise in the planning, managing, and implementation of DOE's civilian nuclear energy research programs. The committee is composed of 18 individuals of diverse backgrounds selected for their technical expertise and experience, established records of distinguished professional service, and their knowledge of issues that pertain to nuclear energy.
DOE IG Special Inquiry on Sandia National Laboratories
DOE IG
The Department of Energy's (Department) Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is a Government-owned, contractor-operated laboratory that is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) nuclear weapons complex. In 1993, the Management and Operating (M&O) contract was competitively awarded and was set to expire on September 30, 2012, but it was extended for 12 months with two 3 month option periods, which extended the contract for an additional 6 months beyond the September 30, 2013 expiration date. On March 17, 2014, the Department announced that it was moving forward with a noncompetitive extension for a period of 2 years with an option for a third year while NNSA prepared for a full and open competition.
Prompted by an Office of Inspector General inspection report, NNSA's Sandia Field Office conducted a preliminary review of documentation from 2009 through 2011 regarding consultant SNL activities. On March 27, 2013, the Sandia Field Office alleged that SNL impermissibly attempted to influence an extension to the Sandia Corporation contract and engaged Ms. Wilson in these activities. |
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