ECA Update: November 19, 2014
Published: Wed, 11/19/14
February Peer Exchange to take place in Washington, DC
2015's first peer exchange will be held on February 12-13 in Washington, DC at the Liaison Hotel. Come join representatives of communities and governments impacted by DOE sites and cleanup operations. High level DOE and administration officials, Washington insiders, and local leaders from across the country will discuss important issues and provide you with their insights on legislation and the budget. To register, click the link above. Hope to see you then!
Congress asked to spend more on WIPP
Albuquerque Business First
November 19, 2014
The leaders of the Senate panel finalizing federal energy spending bills have been asked to add another $113 million to appropriations for cleaning up the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
The leaders of the Senate panel finalizing federal energy spending bills have been asked to add another $113 million to appropriations for cleaning up the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
The request was made in a letter sent by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM).
The plant has been closed since February following a fire and a radiation release.
"WIPP is the nation's only deep geologic repository for transuranic nuclear weapons waste and an integral part of the environmental clean-up of Cold War programs at Department of Energy defense sites around the country," the senators wrote in the letter. "We believe it is essential that WIPP have additional funding in FY15 to continue implementing the recovery plan, including all of the recommendations of the Accident Investigation Boards. Though the president's original FY15 budget request for WIPP did not reflect the additional funding required to respond to the accidents, we very much appreciate your including additional funding in your subcommittee's draft bill for FY15 to support of WIPP's recovery."
According to the senators, the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations bill drafted in June provided $323 million for WIPP, including $102 million for WIPP cleanup. The senators' letter requests the appropriators' "continued support for funding for the recovery of [WIPP] in the fiscal year 2015 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill or in any continuing resolution." In total, the senators requested $334 million, including $5.5 million for safeguards and security.
Senate Environment and Public Works Leaders Spar Over NRC Chair Nominee
ECA Staff
Senate EPW Ranking Member David Vitter (R-LA) wrote to Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) yesterday objecting to a scheduled vote on the nomination of Jeffry Baran to fill out the term of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Allison Macfarlane. Baran, a current member of the Commission, was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 56-44 in September to fill a term that expires in June 2015. If confirmed to fill Macfarlane's term, he could serve until June 2018 and may be designated as the next NRC Chairman by President Obama.
Chairman Boxer had scheduled a committee vote on Baran's nomination for November 18, 2014. In his letter, Sen. Vitter objected to the vote arguing that Baran's fitness to serve a longer term needed to be examined in a hearing. Among the objections raised by Republicans is the fact that he had only visited one nuclear power plan prior to his nomination. Sen. Boxer responded to that point by noting that another commissioner had not visited any plants at the time of her confirmation but no object was raised. In a letter responding to Vitter, Sen. Boxer noted that Baran testified during a 90 minute hearing in September attended by 8 members. Following the hearing, he answered 88 questions for the record, 83 of which were submitted by Republicans. "You have had ample time and recent opportunity to thoroughly question Mr. Baran," she wrote.
The vote on Baran's nomination was postponed and has not yet been rescheduled. ECA Staff will monitor this story and keep you updated.
Read Sen. Vitter's full letter here.
Read Sen. Boxer's full response here.
DOE's Piketon plans largely championed by public
Chillicothe Gazette
November 18, 2014
Comments at a public meeting Monday suggested overwhelming support for the Department of Energy's plans to demolish more than 200 buildings at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and build an on-site disposal facility to house some of the waste.
Technically, there are two separate issues on the table. One has to do with whether the buildings are torn down; the other concerns are what should happen to the demolition debris and other waste if the structures are, in fact, razed.
DOE officials are recommending the demolition of the more than 200 buildings still standing on the former Cold War-era uranium enrichment campus in Piketon, as well as a waste disposal plan that calls for keeping a majority of the nearly 1.5 million cubic yards of debris on-site in a specially engineered disposal facility and transporting the rest of it off-site.
Those are not the only options, however.
The agency also studied, but is not recommending, the option of leaving the buildings alone. When it comes to the disposal, other options include doing nothing with the waste or transporting all of it off-site.
The public comment period began this past week and extends through Jan. 10.
The department, along with cleanup contractor Fluor-B&W Portsmouth and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, hosted the 3½-hour meeting Monday at Waverly High School to collect public comments from people who wished to state their support or opposition to the proposal in person and on the record.
Some comments were brief, such as the ones pledging "full and total" support for the cleanup as recommended by the DOE. Others exceeded the time limit and had to be cut short.
Among those voicing support for the DOE's preferred plans were Pike County Commissioner Blaine Beekman and multiple members of the Site Specific Advisory Board, a panel of local stakeholders that offers advice and recommendations to the DOE on matters such as environmental remediation and waste management.
"Our first reaction was negative, but after much discussion with DOE, members of our community and our fellow commissioners in Jackson, Ross and Scioto counties, we reached a consensus," Beekman said. "We could accept the low-level waste cell at Piketon if, in return, DOE would commit to a cleanup of the existing (contaminated) plumes and landfills on site."
Herman Potter, president of the United Steelworkers union's Local 689 chapter, said the consolidation of the plumes and landfills are essential to re-industrializing the site for future use. He urged the DOE to maintain the site's unique infrastructure because it "keeps workers on the site and can be a carrot for industries wanting to come in."
Potter and several others said the DOE's written commitment to cleaning up the site must include stronger language that ensures the work will be done.
"The language used in the plan is not all mandatory; it's permissive and allows DOE to back out of some things," said Kevin Shoemaker, an attorney for the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative.
Before the crowd of about 100 people, the plans also encountered opposition from the likes of environmentalist and historic preservationist Geoffrey Sea and Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security President Vina Colley.
"We want jobs and we want the cleanup to go forward, but if we build the (on-site disposal facility), there's no guarantee we're not going to become a national dump site," Colley said.
The DOE plan stipulates the facility would not accept outside waste, but Colley remains unconvinced that will remain the case.
Sea criticized the comment process, calling for it to be extended to 120 days to allow for adequate discussion about what he said are two separate issues. He supports tearing down all of the buildings except one -- the control room, which he said has historical significance and likely no contamination.
He also called for more meetings to be scheduled.
Sea said the entire process has been "rigged to ramrod the on-site disposal facility through."
Advisory board passes recommendations, DOE to review
Aiken Standard
November 19, 2014
The Savannah River Site's Citizens Advisory Board, or CAB, passed several recommendations Tuesday, including one that requests more information on safety incidents that occurred on Site earlier this year.
The recommendation was put to vote in the Snelling Center in Augusta, the location of the final full board CAB meeting of the year.
CAB unanimously passed the recommendation, which asks for a presentation on the Site's response to a May 16 letter to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
"The (board) is increasingly concerned with shortcomings in the safe performance of work across the Savannah River Site," the letter said. "Particular areas of concern include the implementation of worker and facility safety controls, the conduct of maintenance and hazardous energy control."
The Site briefed the safety board on those safety issues and recommendation manager Bob Doerr said CAB is hoping to receive a presentation on that briefing and any other safety updates in the first quarter of 2015.
"We want to know if there are any other safety issues at SRS in comparison to other DOE sites," Doerr said. "We're asking for feedback in the first quarter. We don't (want) these safety concerns to linger."
In addition, the CAB passed a recommendation brought forth from the Site-Specific Advisory Board, a that oversees CAB and other local boards.
CAB Chairwoman Marolyn Parson said the recommendation is based on the fact that several sites still have a lot of transuranic waste to send to the pilot plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is currently closed because of an exposure incident in February.
"There's a concern that the waste will have to stay at the sites because of issues at the plant," Parson said. "But there is an above-ground storage right now, so they want modifications made to continue sending shipments."
In other news, CAB held elections for next year's chairperson and vice chairperson. CAB member Harold Simon was elected as chairman of the board and Nina Spinelli as vice chairwoman. Their terms begin after the January 2015 meeting.
Updates on K-31, K-27 and the leaking reactor pool
Knoxblogs.com
November 18, 2014
UCOR President Ken Rueter said the Oak Ridge cleanup contractor is making real progress on the demolition of the K-31 building, which began Oct. 8. Demolition is already three or four weeks ahead of schedule, he said.
Earlier projections were that the project would take about a year to complete, but UCOR expects to improve on that.
"We were talking about (completion) in the fall or winter of 2015. We're feeling pretty good about early summer now," Rueter said during a brief interview at the opening reception for the ETEBA conference. "Again, a lot depends on the weather."
About 500 truckloads of waste from K-31 demo work has already been disposed of at the DOE landfill (known as the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility), the UCOR exec said.
"We're progressing very well," he said.
Meanwhile, Rueter also noted progress in the deactivation of the K-27 building, the last remaining process building at the former uranium-enrichment plant.
"We're in the building, removing most of the process equipment on the operational floor," he said, indicating the focus is on high-risk units with most of the radioactive technetium contamination.
UCOR has hired a professional videographer to make a video documenting the deactivation work inside K-27. Some of it's already been done, according to Rueter, with no managers interviewed -- only those doing the work inside the high-hazard nuclear facility.
Meanwhile, I asked Rueter if a decision had been made on whether to drain the leaking reactor pool and remove the radioactive contents at the 60-year-old Oak Ridge Research Reactor at ORNL.
"We've submitted a series of recommendations to DOE, and we're waiting to see what their decision is," he said. "We expect something this year from them, and then we'll move out (with the project)."
Rueter confirmed that UCOR recommended draining the pool at the Oak Ridge Research Reactor (Building 3042).
"We did. We recommended removing the irradiated contents and draining it and going cold and dark," he said. "Deactivated."
He confirmed that the recommendation also includes carrying out a similar project at the nearby Bulk Shielding Reactor (Building 3010) -- another idle, decades-old reactor.
So, if that's approved, where would UCOR send the irradiated metals housed in the reactor pools?
"We'd actually do a procurement on that and see what the best solution in," Rueter said. It could go to NNSS (Nevada National Security Site), it could go to a commercial facility."
I had thought those metals might be sent to a hot cell at ORNL for storage.
"'That was one of the options that we looked at, but that is not our preferred option," Rueter said. "It'd be better to dispose of the waste."
He said UCOR's general philosophy is to only deal with waste once.
Nuclear Security Expert Talks WIPP, LANL And Non-Proliferation
KUNM
November 18, 2014
News broke last weekend that Los Alamos National Laboratory took shortcuts when treating some nuclear waste headed to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. One of the LANL waste drums sprang a radiation leak earlier this year, contaminating workers and closing the facility.
James Doyle spent 17 years at LANL as part of the Nuclear Engineering and Non-Proliferation group, which was tasked with the measurement, control and accounting of nuclear materials. The group travels the world to visit countries that possess weapons-grade material to help catalog and secure it.
Doyle was terminated in July due to a reduction in force. He's begun doing contract work for Nuclear Watch New Mexico in Santa Fe and the Belfer Center at Harvard University. He says the real reason he lost his job is that he had published an article challenging the logic behind nuclear weapons.
KUNM: How did you come to this view?
DOYLE: To me, the nuclear weapon only provides you deterrence against the threat that it creates. They're only good for trying to prevent some other country that has nuclear weapons from attacking you with nuclear weapons. And if they're ever used, that constitutes tremendous failure of national security policy on everybody's part.
So it's not a revelation that I came to recently in life. I've always felt that way, and there was kind of an internal conflict working at Los Alamos National Laboratory because that is the birthplace of the bomb, and the primary mission of the laboratory is maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile.
The MK 6 nuclear bomb produced between 1951 and 1955. Modern weapons are dozens and dozens of times more powerful, according to James Doyle.
In 1993, the United States had just realized that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a great deal of nuclear material in dozens and dozens of locations throughout now Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union. And there was a program that was created for the United States laboratory personnel to go over and provide this type of technical assistance for securing material.
KUNM: Is it your view that this kind of work ensures the public health and safety of the world?
DOYLE: Well, it's a step in that direction, but ultimately I think that we've got to get rid of all weapons-grade nuclear materials and nuclear weapons.
You can't keep these materials perfectly secure. There are mechanical breakdowns, there's human error. I feel as though the only real way to significantly lower the probability that somebody's going to acquire this stuff and be able to build a weapon is to not have any of the weapons-grade materials, period.
There are many many things that have to happen before I would support the United States eliminating its nuclear arsenal, and one of those is that we have to begin a process where all the other countries in the world move towards a legal prohibition against the manufacture and possession of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-grade materials. Now that idea is as old as the nuclear weapon itself.
KUNM: Do you support nuclear energy?
DOYLE: I believe nuclear energy is an important option for a mix of energy sources as we go forward, and it's biggest advantage of course is that it is a low-carbon-emission form of generating electricity.
KUNM: And the problem of course with nuclear energy is figuring out how to handle the waste.
DOYLE: Absolutely. We can move to the use of long-term, above-ground, what they call dry-cask storage. There is the possibility of getting the regulations at the WIPP facility in Southern New Mexico so that you could put that type of waste there. But now of course WIPP has been temporarily shut down.
KUNM: Do you think it's possible to have no nuclear weapons in the U.S. or around the world?
DOYLE: Nine countries have nuclear weapons. Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of the use of these weapons in Japan. So try to imagine now, 70 years from today, where nine, 10, 12, or 13 countries possess nuclear weapons. Is it possible to do that and to avoid a nuclear war? I don't think so.
I think it's essential that we believe that we can reach another level of understanding with regard to these weapons and we can put in place international mechanisms that prevent their possession and manufacture by all countries. |
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