Settlement with DOE good for NM
By Secretary Ryan Flynn / New Mexico Environment Department
Albuquerque Journal
May 13, 2015
LINK
 
A little more than a year ago, a drum of transuranic waste packed with incompatible materials ruptured after being transported 300 miles through New Mexico from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. When the drum ruptured and released radiation into the atmosphere, Gov. Susana Martinez and her administration moved quickly and decisively.
 
Immediately after being notified of the release, the New Mexico Environment Department was on the ground in Carlsbad meeting with members of the community and demanding that the U.S. Department of Energy share information with the public. We also immediately took aggressive steps to ensure the public was safe as we began investigating what happened. NMED ordered DOE to isolate and secure all of the drums containing incompatible materials, and we required DOE to implement additional monitoring and controls over the secured drums in the event another release were to occur. As Gov. Martinez has repeatedly stated, “Making sure that these facilities operate safely is non-negotiable.”
 
Once we secured all of the containers at WIPP and LANL, NMED initiated a comprehensive and intensive investigation lasting more than nine months. We found multiple violations of the hazardous waste permits at both LANL and WIPP, which confirmed major problems that contributed to the incident. NMED issued two Administrative Compliance Orders totaling $54 million and cited 31 violations, which centered on the handling of mixed transuranic waste at both LANL and at WIPP.
 
Following accelerated and intensive negotiations between the Martinez administration and DOE, we agreed to an unprecedented settlement agreement. The agreement requires DOE to provide more than $73 million for a variety of critical environmental and public safety projects throughout the state, projects that were developed after receiving input from a variety of stakeholders, such as the Regional Coalition of Los Alamos Communities, the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board and the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force. It is the largest settlement ever between a state and DOE, and it paves the way for New Mexico to emerge from this situation safer and more secure.
 
With more than half of the settlement funds ($46 million) designated for much-needed road improvements along WIPP-designated routes throughout New Mexico – including the route that runs from Los Alamos, then through or alongside the Northern New Mexico pueblos, Santa Fe, Roswell, Artesia and to Carlsbad – the safety of future shipments to WIPP will most certainly be improved.
 
Nearly $20 million will also be invested in critical water infrastructure improvements in northern New Mexico, which will allow NMED to manage the watershed in and around Los Alamos providing stronger safeguards for regional water quality. DOE will also invest $5 million in an Emergency Operations Center in Carlsbad that will provide training for first responders and mining rescue teams. And finally, DOE will invest $3 million for a triennial compliance and operational audit of both facilities, which will be in addition to NMED’s regular inspections and oversight, and will provide increased transparency and operational rigor.
 
The landmark agreement also requires DOE to implement corrective actions at LANL and WIPP. These corrective actions address the original 31 violations cited in NMED’s two Administrative Compliance Orders and are vital for ensuring that both facilities will operate safely now and into the future.
 
Protecting the health and safety of New Mexicans will continue to be our top priority as we work through this situation. With this settlement agreement, Gov. Martinez and her administration fought for New Mexicans, ensuring that federal funds will be invested directly back into our communities and leaving the existing operational and cleanup funding for LANL and WIPP intact.
 
Ensuring the safety and success of WIPP and LANL, the people who work there, and their local communities is an enormous responsibility. The Martinez administration’s successful negotiation with DOE strengthens our communities and environment, and confirms New Mexico’s vital role in fulfilling our nation’s security mission.


Hanford Waste Treatment: DOE Needs to Evaluate Alternatives to Proposed Projects
GAO
May 7, 2015
LINK
 
The WTP is a key part of DOE's strategy for treating 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks at the Hanford site in Washington State. The WTP is being constructed under a design-build contract and has a history of technical and management challenges. DOE stopped construction in 2012 on parts of the WTP, including the Pretreatment facility, pending resolution of these challenges and has stated that several milestones will likely be missed.
 
In September 2013, DOE proposed a waste treatment strategy that may allow some waste to be treated before resolving WTP's technical issues, including construction of two new facilities. Senate Report 113-44 accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 included a provision for GAO to examine the status of construction and operations at the WTP. This report examines (1) how DOE's two new proposed facilities help achieve Hanford's waste treatment mission and how they were selected, (2) the extent to which DOE's estimated costs and schedules for constructing the facilities meet best practices for reliable estimates, and (3) the extent to which technical and management challenges continue to affect the WTP. GAO reviewed DOE and contractor data and documents.
 
GAO recommendations include that DOE (1) broaden the facilities' statements of mission need to allow for a full analysis of alternatives, (2) revise the facilities' cost and schedule estimates in accordance with industry best practices, and (3) enlist the services of an external entity to assist with oversight of the WTP contractor. DOE generally agreed with GAO's recommendations but not some of the conclusions. GAO continues to believe its conclusions are fair and well supported.


Federal judge to consider proposals for Hanford's future
Belleville News-Democrat
May 13, 2015
LINK
 
A federal judge has agreed to consider all three proposals to modify a court-enforced cleanup agreement for Hanford, which was signed in 2010.
 
The U.S. Department of Energy and the states of Oregon and Washington asked the federal court to intervene in the case in fall 2014, The Tri-City Herald reported.
 
Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson of Spokane said in an order filed Monday that all three parties showed conditions had significantly changed, and that warrants modification of the consent decree.
 
She will look at the specific requests from each agency and likely will schedule an evidence hearing.
 
The consent decree was signed in 2010 to resolve a lawsuit brought by Washington state against the Energy Department over deadlines it looked like the department would not be able to meet.
 
The Energy Department has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in tanks left from the past production of weapons plutonium. It plans to turn much of the waste into a stable glass form for disposal at the vitrification plant.
 
But "almost immediately after the consent decree was entered," the Energy Department gave notice that one or more of the new deadlines were at risk, Malouf Peterson said in the court order.
 
The consent decree discussed the possibility of changed conditions, including unforeseen technical and safety concerns that might affect the schedule. But the specific conditions that changed were not listed.
 
While some of the changes could have been foreseeable, Washington did not show that the Energy Department anticipated them, the judge found.
 
Construction has stopped on key parts of the plant while technical issues are resolved.


Editorial: A clearer path exists with MOX program
Aiken Standard
May 12, 2015
LINK
 
It’s both careless and short-sighted to press the reset button on a decades-old initiative to dispose of weapons grade plutonium.
 
That myopic mentality is likely creeping even further into President Barack Obama’s administration after the recent release of a study indicating the Mixed Oxide, or MOX, Fuel Facility at Savannah River Site is less cost effective than other disposition options.
 
The report – released by Aerospace Corporation, a California-based nonprofit research center – puts the lifecycle cost of the project at $51 billion, an admittedly significant uptick from a cost estimation of $25 to $30 billion released last year.
 
However, while the latest study reinforces the idea that down-blending and burying this material is the cheapest option, no long-term plan exists for such a proposal.
 
Should the federal government follow this path, only the initial steps are in place. The end game essentially remains a mystery.
 
Aerospace concluded that the down-blending method would total $17 billion. Once that process is complete, the material would then be packaged and transported to a geologically stable underground repository for disposition.
 
Some people envision the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, facility in Carlsbad, New Mexico as such a long-term site.
 
However, that site isn’t even operational right now because of a violent chemical reaction that occurred last year after a drum of plutonium waste stored there leaked. Even if WIPP were operational, this type of disposition is technically not what was envisioned by an international agreement in 2000 that allowed the MOX program to move forward. That deal, signed between the U.S. and Russia and, in part, brokered by Ernest Moniz before he became U.S. energy secretary, called for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium, locking the U.S. into turning its own plutonium into fuel rather than directly disposing of it through burial or similar means.
 
It’s also important to note that MOX technology has been in use in Europe for more than 20 years and is used in more than 30 reactors worldwide, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, a semi-autonomous branch of the Department of Energy.
 
The MOX facility should be considered instrumental in permanently removing excess weapons-grade plutonium from the stockpile of the U.S. It also carries the added benefit of converting the material into an actual fuel element, which could be used in commercial nuclear stations to power homes and businesses. One MOX fuel assembly can actually provide enough energy to power about 4,600 homes over a three-year period. The facility is also envisioned to employ 800 to 1,000 employees with operations expected to continue into the 2030s.
 
Sustaining this mission of disposing of nuclear material should involve an initiative with an end game. At this time, that exists much more clearly for MOX than any of the other options floated by Department of Energy officials.


Officials Say Nuclear Rods Safe to Enter Idaho
Associated Press
May 13, 2015
LINK
 
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Officials at an Idaho nuclear facility say they can safely handle two shipments of 25 spent fuel rods for research and that it won’t start to turn the state into a nuclear waste dump.
 
Todd Allen of the Idaho National Laboratory says the U.S. Department of Energy wants to better understand “high burnup” spent fuel that’s accumulating at nuclear power plants, which is important for storing it. That type of fuel remains in reactor cores longer to produce more energy, coming out hotter and more radioactive.
 
But two former Idaho governors who fought to keep nuclear waste out of Idaho say the shipments violate a 1995 agreement and are the start of more nuclear waste to come. Supporters of the shipments say Idaho will lose millions of dollars if it turns them away.


Security at the Nevada National Security Site
DOE IG
May 8, 2015
LINK
 
The Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) supports national defense as well as research and development programs for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).  Security-related activities at NNSS are primarily conducted by two contractors: National Security Technologies, LLC, (NSTec) and Centerra Group, LLC.
 
During the course of our audit, nothing came to our attention to indicate that security at NNSS was not generally managed effectively.  However, we identified an important security infrastructure project that experienced significant schedule delays and cost increases.  The project, Argus, is the NNSA's recommended enterprise security system, which integrates access control, intrusion detection, and video assessment of alarms to protect and control high-consequence assets.  NSTec planned to replace the aging NNSS Process Equipment and Control System with Argus.
 
We determined that the Argus project experienced schedule delays and cost increases as a result of inadequate project management and funding issues.  NNSA project management officials told us that action has been taken to address the project management issues and that funding for the Argus project has been requested in the fiscal year 2016 budget request.


Our Nuclear Waste Program Needs Reform – Here's How
The Hill
May 14, 2015
LINK
 
As the 114th Congress prepares to convene its first hearing Friday on the federal government's management of spent nuclear fuel, there is reason for optimism that the stars could be aligning to fix this broken program.
 
Consider:

•Pressure on the administration and Congress to act is growing, with taxpayers already having paid $4.5 billion in damages from the federal government's failure to move spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plant sites. Each year of inaction after 2020 increases liability to taxpayers by an estimated $500 million.

•Federal courts have forced the Department of Energy—in the absence of any viable nuclear waste program—to suspend collection of the monthly surcharge that has poured about $750 million annually from electricity consumers into the Nuclear Waste Fund. Federal courts also have ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to proceed with the license review process for the nuclear waste repository proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

•In just the past three months, two separate projects to establish consolidated interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel have been unveiled in west Texas and southeast New Mexico.

•Only weeks ago, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced that, to finally achieve some progress in this tattered program, the agency will undertake steps to decouple disposal efforts for commercial spent fuel and the Defense Department's high-level radioactive waste. While the Secretary's initiative lacks details and a budget, and therefore fails to inspire confidence, he did pledge to move in parallel on consolidated storage for the byproducts of both commercial and defense nuclear applications.
 
Friday's hearing before a House Energy and Commerce panel should shed additional light on these developments. It also will give lawmakers a chance to begin coalescing behind a comprehensive strategy to safely meet the federal government's legal obligation to manage spent reactor fuel.
 
As a commissioner on the Michigan Public Service Commission and chair of the Nuclear Issues-Waste Disposal Subcommittee at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, I supported passage of the 2002 law codifying designation of Yucca Mountain as the nation's repository site. In the dozen years since then, there has been little progress, rather only the abrupt and arbitrary policy change by President Obama to declare that Yucca Mountain is not a "workable option."
 
That's not what consumers deserve. Instead, here are key elements of what the federal program should look like. Many of these are contained in the very report commissioned by the Obama administration's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future:
 
•Complete the licensing review for the Yucca Mountain repository project

•Charter a new federal corporation dedicated solely to implementing the nuclear waste management program and empowered with the authority and resources needed to succeed

•Provide assured access by the nuclear waste management program to the revenues generated by consumers' fee payments, once they resume, and to the balance of the Nuclear Waste Fund

•Develop one or more consolidated interim storage facilities at volunteer sites with priority given to the used fuel from decommissioned reactors
 
If implemented in the near term, these steps would create a solid foundation on which to build a viable spent fuel management program while development of a repository is pursued.
 
It is a travesty that the Department of Energy has failed completely to meet its statutory and contractual obligation to begin moving spent fuel from commercial reactor sites beginning in 1998. Congress' renewed interest in this effort is welcome and needed.
 
Although many of the key Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations require congressional action to be implemented fully, the Energy Department, under existing authority, can and should take action immediately to advance the recommendations. The administration should work with Congress on near-term actions to give consumers of electricity from nuclear power plants the used fuel management program they paid for and deserve.
 
Greg White has served as a commissioner on the Michigan Public Service Commission since 2009 and chairs the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Sub Committee on Nuclear Issues-Waste Disposal.


Bush opposes Yucca Mountain; at odds with Rubio
News2
May 13, 2015
LINK
 
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Jeb Bush isn't officially in the race yet, but he's already parting ways with one declared Republican presidential candidate regarding Yucca Mountain.
 
The ex-Florida governor told reporters after a Reno town hall meeting Wednesday he believes a high-level nuclear waste repository should be built only where the state and local communities have reached a consensus that they want it there.
 
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters in South Carolina last weekend the Nevada site was chosen long ago. He says the money already has been invested there, so it should go forward unless someone has a better idea.
 
Bush said the waste dump shouldn't be "forced down the throat" of anyone. He says the Yucca Mountain plan has "stalled out" and won't be adopted, at least in the immediate future.


Yucca Explained
ECA Staff
May 12, 2015
Reporters Molly K. Hooper and Tim Cama discuss the controversy surrounding Yucca Mountain as part of their America’s Nuclear Energy Future series.  The series is sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute.  The video can be viewed here and more from NEI is here.
 
 
Former Energy Department official wins huge pay raise after moving to firm with deep ties to DOE
Public Integrity
May 13, 2015
LINK
 
Five months after Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman resigned and left the department’s Forrestal Building in Washington, he started a new job eleven miles away as president of a troubled corporation that he had championed while serving in the department’s top ranks.
 
Over five-and-a-half years as the department’s chief operating officer, Poneman approved or advocated giving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and other assistance to the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) during public hearings and private discussions with lawmakers and White House officials, according to interviews with those present.
 
The company, which processes uranium and sells nuclear fuel under its current name of Centrus Energy, gave Poneman a roughly 700 percent pay raise when it hired him as its chief executive officer on March 5. It will pay him roughly $1.5 million in salary and bonuses this year and up to $2 million starting in 2016, according to the company’s reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. His salary at the DOE was $178,700 a year.
 
It’s common for federal officials to move from government to industry, expanding their contacts and influence in the former and their salary in the latter. But Poneman’s passage from government overseer to a company he financed with public funds has drawn unusually harsh and bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog groups.
 
It has also brought new attention to the department’s controversial, ongoing efforts to bail out a private firm with highly paid executives, which passed through a 2014 bankruptcy and still experiences huge losses. USEC was once government-run, but it was bought by investors for $1.9 billion in 1998, and they’ve been the beneficiaries of the stream of federal aid that Poneman helped arrange.
 
In interviews, Poneman and other Centrus officials said there is nothing inappropriate about his new job and that the company did not solicit him for its top position until several weeks after he left the Energy Department. “This thing came quite unexpectedly,” Poneman said, after he had already arranged a fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He says that he will follow ethics laws that restrict his future dealings with the Energy Department.
 
Under those rules, Poneman is barred for a year from seeking federal action from DOE at meetings with DOE employees. In 2009, he took the Obama administration’s ethics pledge to extend that rule to two years.The rules also permanently bar Poneman from representing Centrus before DOE on contracts and grants he was “personally and substantially” involved in deciding.
 
Discussing Centrus' work with officials at a DOE-funded lab
 
But the rules primarily bar contacts between Poneman and DOE's direct employees. For a federal agency like DOE, which does an overwhelming proportion of its work through contractors, this restriction is not so limiting.
 
For example, Thom Mason, the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which is operated for DOE by contractor UT-Battelle LLC, told the Center for Public Integrity he spoke to Poneman in late March — shortly after Poneman started at Centrus — to discuss the performance of the uranium enrichment machines that Centrus is developing under a $117 million subcontract with the lab, which gets about 80 percent of its budget from the Energy Department.
 
Asked if he felt that his discussion with Poneman raised any ethical issues, Mason said he felt it was “within the scope of the relationship we have with Centrus.” Mason said that while Poneman may be barred from contacting DOE officials, that prohibition does not apply to DOE's contractors. “I don’t think that there’s any conflict that I would be concerned about,” he said. DOE declined comment.
 
“He’s running a company now whose business is deeply intermingled with his work as a public official,” said Michael Smallberg, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group. “At the very least it creates a perception that he was too cozy with a company that he should have been overseeing at an arms-length distance.”
 
Key lawmakers are also concerned about Poneman's new work. In March, Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), told Centrus officials in a letter that Poneman’s shift raised questions about whether he had complied with rules requiring that federal officials looking for private employment report their contacts with potential employers and recuse themselves from related decision-making. They noted that Poneman had been “substantially involved in business arrangements between the DOE and Centrus” when he was at the department.
 
Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry confirmed in an email that Poneman "addressed" issues at the Energy Department that affected USEC, but he said Poneman did so to protect national security and to "advance the best interest of the American public." A DOE lawyer told House lawmakers in an April 30 letter that there is no “indication” that Poneman violated the department’s ethics rules.