ECA Update: March 20, 2015
Published: Fri, 03/20/15
NNSA Releases Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan This week, the National Nuclear Security Administration released its Stockpile Stewardship report to Congress. The Fiscal Year 2016 Plan is NNSA’s 25-year “strategic program for maintaining the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile.” It can be read here. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has identified 83 facilities at six of its eight sites for transfer to the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) for disposition, and the condition of NNSA's facilities awaiting transfer continues to degrade. NNSA plans to transfer all 83 facilities to EM over the next 25 years. Twenty-seven of them are still operational but are expected to become nonoperational in the next 25 years, and 56 are nonoperational now. In 2009, EM agreed to accept 14 NNSA facilities when it had funds available to begin decontamination and decommissioning. Six years later, none of these facilities have been transferred, and EM officials said they may not be able to accept these or other NNSA facilities until at least 2030 due to budget uncertainties and other priorities. Meanwhile, as NNSA maintains contaminated nonoperational facilities, the facilities' condition continues to worsen, resulting in increased costs to maintain them, and NNSA documents show that some facilities will require significant additional maintenance to prevent the spread of contamination. For example, the Alpha-5 facility at NNSA's Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee has degraded to the extent that site officials now detect contaminants, such as mercury, in areas where they were not detected 2 years earlier, and additional funds are needed to repair its failing roof.
The Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) of the U.S. Department of Energy has announced the launch of a new website to provide timely and easily accessible public information about DOE’s Environmental Management (EM) cleanup efforts at the Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant Sites. The new website may be accessed at www.energy.gov/pppo. The new site represents a complete redesign of PPPO’s internet presence, now located within DOE’s Energy.gov platform. Increased capabilities provided by the transition will translate into more news and resources for stakeholders, residents and media. The goal is for visitors to have a modern Internet experience with easily searchable and relevant content. “As we move our gaseous diffusion plants further into decontamination and decommissioning, it’s increasingly important that our stakeholders and neighbors in Ohio and Kentucky have easy access to the latest and most useful information,” PPPO Manager William E. Murphie said. “This new website will help people stay current, involved and informed about what we have accomplished and what challenges we face going forward.” PPPO’s retooled website provides background on all areas of PPPO’s services, as well as information about the cleanup at the Portsmouth and Paducah Sites, news stories, contractor information, useful links and publications, and online signup for news and updates. The site is optimized for easy viewing on mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. PPPO worked closely with EM External Affairs as well as DOE Public Affairs and Information Technology offices in migrating to the Energy.gov platform. Transitioning DOE office and field site websites to a single online platform is expected to help DOE avoid millions of dollars in costs annually, while improving and integrating the Department’s communications infrastructure. WASHINGTON — Leaders of a House subcommittee have set an April 9 tour of Yucca Mountain, part of a campaign to draw new attention to the mothballed Nevada nuclear waste site.
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the House environment and the economy subcommittee, and Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., the panel’s ranking Democrat, have issued an invitation for other panel members to join the trip. According to the March 11 letter viewed Tuesday, the Department of Energy “will provide a comprehensive tour” of Yucca Mountain, including an examination of research that was conducted there, a discussion of the site’s infrastructure and a trek to the top of the mountain “for a 360-degree view of the surrounding area for perspective of the project’s setting” in the remote desert. The lawmakers will be briefed by DOE experts during the ride from Las Vegas to the site 100 miles to the northwest, according to the invitation. It could not be immediately learned whether the visitors would be taken inside the 5-mile exploratory tunnel into the mountain, or whether the visit would come with a cost. Shimkus and others in an entourage briefly entered the tunnel during a 2011 trip where DOE said the cost to open the site amounted to $15,000. Nye County Commissioner Dan Schinhofen said local leaders are contacting Shimkus to arrange for representatives to join the upcoming tour. Other Nye officials said it appears there will not be time for the lawmakers to take a side trip to Pahrump where the county operates a Yucca Mountain Information Center. Environment and Energy Daily, an energy trade publication, first reported the new trip. Shimkus, a leading advocate of restarting the Yucca project and developing the site into a nuclear waste repository, has said he is preparing legislation to get the project on track five years after it was terminated by the Obama administration. The U.S. Department of Energy has named a new manager for Savannah River Site, according to the site’s public affairs office.
Jack Craig will replace Dave Moody who is retiring from the Energy Department in June and was manager at SRS for five years. Craig has served as director of the environmental management consolidated business center in Cincinnati, Ohio since 2004. “Jack is a seasoned leader with decades of experience in the (environmental management) program, including serving as acting SRS manager in 2010,” said Mark Whitney, acting assistant secretary of environmental management, in an e-mail to site employees. SRS is a national security complex and former Cold War nuclear materials production facility. Its environmental management mission focuses on cleaning up plutonium and uranium, managing spent nuclear fuels, treating 37 million gallons of liquid waste in underground storage tanks and numerous other activities. Craig has worked for the Energy Department for 20 years in various positions, including environmental cleanup activities at former nuclear weapons sites. At the consolidated business center, Craig manages 192 federal staff who support 15 Energy Department sites with an annual budget of more than $1 billion. The center provides financial management, cost estimating, human resources, contracting and acquisitions and other services to the environmental management program. He was acting manager at SRS from March to November 2010. Patricia Falcone, the associate director for National Security and International Affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has been selected as deputy director for Science and Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
Falcone will join the Lab on April 7. She replaces Greg Suski, who held the position on an interim basis after former Science and Technology deputy director Bill Goldstein was named lab director last May. As a member of the LLNL senior management team, Falcone will serve as the principal advocate and champion of the Laboratory’s science and technology base, and oversee the strategic development of its capabilities. She will be responsible for the Laboratory's portfolio of science, technology and engineering (ST&E) activities, collaborative research with academia and the private sector, the Institutional ST&E Roadmap, and the internal investment portfolio, including the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. During her tenure as an associate director at OSTP – a position appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate – Falcone advised on a wide range of national security science and technology issues, including the health of national security science and technology capabilities in federal and national laboratories, universities and industry. Prior to her appointment as associate director, she was on assignment from Sandia National Laboratories to OSTP, working on science and technology issues associated with nuclear security. While at Sandia Falcone served in a variety of technical and management positions and was named a distinguished member of the technical staff in 1989. Throughout her career, Falcone has worked with Lawrence Livermore and arrives with knowledge of the National Nuclear Security Administration and its laboratories. |
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