The February 2016 Bulletin is now available and can be read online here.

Stories include:

•          ECA Peer Exchange Wrap Up: Consent-Based Siting and             Nuclear Priorities

•          Contracting Reform: Progress in the Making

•          Department of Energy FY17 Budget Request Highlights

•          MOX Update: DOE Proposes Cutting 1,250 Jobs at SRS

•          North Dakota Officials Concerned About Peer Bore-Hole                         Project

If there are any stories you'd like featured in next month's issue or important news you'd like to share, please feel free to contact devon@energyca.org.

EPA Notice

March 2, 2016

I want to share with you that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a proposed rule, “Addition of a Subsurface Intrusion Component to the Hazard Ranking System” in the Federal Register today (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/02/29/2016-02749/addition-of-a-subsurface-intrusion-component-to-the-hazard-ranking-system). The Hazard Ranking System (HRS) is a scoring system EPA uses to identify hazardous waste sites eligible to be added to the National Priorities List (NPL).

Subsurface intrusion (SsI) is the migration of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants from contaminated groundwater or soil into an overlying building. SsI can result in people being exposed to harmful levels of hazardous substances, which may be amplified or increased by extended time spent in buildings where SsI occurs. This can raise the lifetime risk of cancer or chronic disease. In an effort to ensure SsI contamination is consistently evaluated, EPA is proposing to add an HRS component allowing EPA to evaluate threats posed by SsI.

There is a 60-day public comment period for the proposed rule that ends on April 29, 2016. Please visit www.regulations.gov to view instructions for submitting comments.

For further information and frequently asked questions about this proposed HRS SsI addition, see http://www.epa.gov/superfund/hrs-subsurface-intrusion.

YouTube: House Energy and Commerce Committee

Please fine the LINK

Grand Forks Herald

March 1, 2016

GBY, N.D. -- The Pierce County Commission shut down any opportunity to drill an exploratory borehole near Rugby that would allow researchers to probe any potential for nuclear waste disposal.

On Tuesday, the commission unanimously voted to tell the Energy and Environmental Research Center “thanks but no thanks” for the project, which the EERC wanted to conduct on state-owned land to help the federal Department of Energy determine whether crystalline rock 3 miles deep could be used for storing spent nuclear fuels.

“We want them to know we’re not interested in this project,” said commission chairman Dave Migler, adding the county did not have a drilling application from EERC and wanted to preempt any attempt to submit one.

About 300 people attended a public hearing in Rugby Feb. 16, and it was clear from comments made that there was very little support for the project, he said.

“We have no regrets at all,” Migler said of the county’s position.

That leaves the EERC, part of the University of North Dakota, with a partnership in the $35 million federal project and nowhere yet to drill. Associate research director John Harju said the county’s action is consistent with the public meeting and not unexpected.

“A lot of people couldn’t believe that it was about science and technology. I know it is, but I fully respect their self-determination,” said Harju, adding that the EERC, the Department of Energy and project lead Battelle Memorial Institute will keep talking and figure out what’s next.

Migler said people in the county understand the research aspect of the project, but remain worried that nuclear disposal could happen in the future, despite reassurances from EERC, the federal agency and Battelle to the contrary.

“It didn’t leave our mind that it sure could happen, maybe not in my lifetime, but in the life of my grandchildren and great-grandchild. We just don’t want it,” Migler said.

Harju said the partners will keep looking for options.

“It’s too soon to say whether we will or will not look in North Dakota. It’s not about the location, but the similar conditions of crystalline rock, which exists in much of the United States and much of the world,” Harju said.

LA Daily Post

March 1, 2016

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories have teamed up to support a DOE initiative through the creation of the Electrocatalysis Consortium (ElectroCat), a collaboration devoted to finding an effective but cheaper alternative to platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.

Announced last week, ElectroCat is dedicated to finding new ways to replace rare and costly platinum group metals in fuel cell cathodes with more accessible and inexpensive substitutes – such as materials based on the earth-abundant metals iron and cobalt.

The heart of the automotive fuel-cell power system is the fuel cell stack, which is where the platinum is used. “Platinum is a precious metal, which means that it is both expensive and difficult to get,” said Piotr Zelenay, a Los Alamos National Laboratory fellow and lead scientist on the Los Alamos component of the consortium.

About half of the total cost of a typical automotive fuel cell stack comes directly from the cost of the platinum metal in the electrode catalysts. “In order to make hydrogen fuel cell cars an affordable reality, we need to find a way to either significantly reduce the amount of platinum needed or completely replace platinum with less expensive materials,” said Debbie Myers, an Argonne senior chemist who will serve as the Argonne lead in the consortium.

“The challenge for us and for industry is to develop new catalysts that meet targets for activity, durability, cost and ease of integration into membrane electrode assemblies,” Zelenay added. “Thankfully, the national laboratory system includes the people who have the skills to address these issues.”

ElectroCat is one of four consortia that make up DOE’s Energy Materials Network (EMN).  The EMN will facilitate industry access to the unique scientific and technical resources available at the national laboratories, enabling manufacturers to bring advanced materials to market more quickly.

“At the core of virtually every problem we tackle at the Energy Department, there is a materials challenge,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Reuben Sarkar. “Whether it’s a better battery, a lighter material or a new fuel cell technology – materials underlie almost everything that we do, so shifting the paradigm from traditional materials research to an acceleration-focused strategy is crucial.”

The partnership between Argonne and Los Alamos that forms the core of ElectroCat involves the study, creation and implementation of possible alternatives to platinum-based electrodes through material- development efforts headed by Los Alamos and accelerated by the high-throughput, combinatorial, characterization and electrode performance modeling capabilities at Argonne, as well as by applying a high-performance supercomputer to model new catalyst structures at Los Alamos.

In developing new materials to be explored, researchers at Los Alamos will bring to bear 15 years of experience in platinum-free catalyst design, synthesis, characterization and testing. In addition, Los Alamos can apply multi-scale modeling techniques that leverage world-class computing facilities to design catalysts with optimal activity, selectivity and durability.

Once the potential replacement candidate materials are identified, scientists in the consortium can examine materials using a number of different methods, including X-ray imaging and spectroscopy techniques at Argonne. Argonne researchers can also investigate samples in a number of different environments that replicate how they would function in real-world scenarios.

By combining the expertise and capabilities at Argonne and Los Alamos, in partnership with the private sector and universities, researchers expect to accelerate the development and implementation of platinum-free catalysts in fuel cells.

“The acceleration of progress in electrocatalysis without platinum will depend on focused catalyst design, guided by multi-scale modeling methods and facilitated by high-throughput methods for synthesis and screening,” Zelenay said. “This partnership will integrate the strengths of both laboratories for this purpose.”

About Los Alamos National Laboratory (www.lanl.gov)

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWX Technologies, Inc. and URS Corporation for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global security concerns.

About Argonne National Laboratory (www.anl.gov)

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the Office of Science website.

ABQ Journal

March 1, 2016

SANTA FE – A new audit is critical of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s system for taking corrective action to solve management problems or correct deficiencies, including on health and safety issues.

The report by the Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General says the lab’s corrective action program “did not always adequately address issues, did not effectively prevent their recurrence and did not consistently identify systemic problems.”

The report says auditors reviewed 196 “high significance” management issues between from January 2009 through February 2014, and almost half — 46 percent — were closed out “without addressing the root cause.”

An example was an August 2010 chemical spill and hazardous waste cleanup at a waste management site. The corrective action plan called for specific changes to prevent the same thing from happening again, “but those changes were not made.” A procedure was revised but “did not address the specific handling and packaging issues that LANL determined contributed to the spill,” says the audit.

In another case, discrepancies with nuclear material control and accountability operations resulted in plans for 16 corrective actions, but five were never completed, with the omissions including failure to address errors in nuclear material inventory, the audit states.

“Systemic issues” were not properly identified at the lab’s stalled plutonium and tritium facilities, according to the audit.

The audit found there are indications that LANL “under-categorizes risk and, therefore, does not apply the appropriate level of attention to safety and health issues, including nuclear safety issues.”

On the positive side, the audit gave a good review to a program to allow employees to raise concerns and have them investigated without retaliation. This program was “generally effective,” but the lab “did not always meet its internal goal for resolving concerns within 90 days,” the audit said.

On Tuesday, a LANL spokesman said: “The Laboratory is working closely with NNSA (the National Nuclear Safety Administration) to address the findings of the DOE-IG Audit Report. The Laboratory and NNSA are very serious about environment safety and health issues, and the Laboratory’s ability to deliver on mission requirements as safely as possible.”

Greg Mello, of the Los Alamos Study Group research and advocacy group, noted that the audit found lab subcontracts that did not include required provisions for a “different professional opinions” process for raising technical concerns related to environmental, health or safety issues. The subcontracts included those for packaging radioactive waste for transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, which has been shut down for two years because a waste drum from Los Alamos leaked. Another cited subcontract was for design of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility, a project abandoned after about $500 million was spent.

“The OIG’s findings are extremely serious” and “tie together a lot of LANL’s problems and illustrate why serious problems keep recurring,” said Mello. He said “there is simply no serious commitment, or effective system in place, to understand and correct problems at LANL.”

Mello called for initiation of a process to change LANL, now operated by private consortium Los Alamos National Security LCC, to a government owned and operated facility. The DOE already has announced that the $2 billion lab operating contract will be rebid in the next couple of years because LANS has failed to achieve adequate performance reviews.

AP: WBKO

February 29, 2016

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Lockheed Martin Corp. and its subsidiaries have agreed to pay $5 million to the federal government over contamination from hazardous waste at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky.

The plant owned by the U.S. Department of Energy hasn't operated since 2013. Prior to that, it enriched uranium for nuclear power plants.

WFPL-FM says Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin is settling two lawsuits that contend the company knowingly did not properly handle hazardous waste. The lawsuits cover the period between 1984 and 1998.

WFPL says lawyers representing the plaintiffs and a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin did not return calls. But the company's annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission said it is admitting no liability or wrongdoing and is settling to avoid further costs of litigation.

Phys.Org

March 2, 2016

LINK      

One of the main reasons for limiting the operating lifetimes of nuclear reactors is that metals exposed to the strong radiation environment near the reactor core become porous and brittle, which can lead to cracking and failure. Now, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found that, at least in some reactors, adding a tiny quantity of carbon nanotubes to the metal can dramatically slow this breakdown process.

For now, the method has only proved effective for aluminum, which limits its applications to the lower-temperature environments found in research reactors. But the team says the method may also be usable in the higher-temperature alloys used in commercial reactors.

The findings are described in the journal Nano Energy, in a paper by MIT Professor Ju Li, postdocs Kang Pyo So and Mingda Li, research scientist Akihiro Kushima, and 10 others at MIT, Texas A&M University, and universities in South Korea, Chile, and Argentina.

Aluminum is currently used in not only research reactor components but also nuclear batteries and spacecraft, and it has been proposed as material for storage containers for nuclear waste. So, improving its operating lifetime could have significant benefits, says Ju Li, who is the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering.

Long-term stability

The metal with carbon nanotubes uniformly dispersed inside "is designed to mitigate radiation damage" for long periods without degrading, says Kang Pyo So.

Helium from radiation transmutation takes up residence inside metals and causes the material to become riddled with tiny bubbles along grain boundaries and progressively more brittle, the researchers explain. The nanotubes, despite only making up a small fraction of the volume—less than 2 percent—can form a percolating, one-dimensional transport network, to provide pathways for the helium to leak back out instead of being trapped within the metal, where it could continue to do damage.

Testing showed that after exposure to radiation, the carbon nanotubes within the metal can be chemically altered to carbides, but they still retain their slender shape, "almost like insects trapped in amber," Ju Li says. "It's quite amazing—you don't see a blob; they retain their morphology. It's still one-dimensional." The huge total interfacial area of these 1-D nanostructures provides a way for radiation-induced point defects to recombine in the metal, alleviating a process that also leads to embrittlement. The researchers showed that the 1-D structure was able to survive up to 70 DPA of radiation damage. (DPA is a unit that refers to how many times, on average, every atom in the crystal lattice is knocked out of its site by radiation, so 70 DPA means a lot of radiation damage.)

After radiation exposure, Ju Li says, "we see pores in the control sample, but no pores" in the new material, "and mechanical data shows it has much less embrittlement." For a given amount of exposure to radiation, the tests have shown the amount of embrittlement is reduced about five to tenfold.

The new material needs only tiny quantities of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)—about 1 percent by weight added to the metal—and these are inexpensive to produce and process, the team says. The composite can be manufactured at low cost by common industrial methods and is already being produced by the ton by manufacturers in Korea, for the automotive industry.

Strength and resilience

Even before exposure to radiation, the addition of this small amount of nanotubes improves the strength of the material by 50 percent and also improves its tensile ductility—its ability to deform without breaking—the team says.

"This is a proof of principle," says Kang Pyo So. While the material used for testing was aluminum, the team plans to run similar tests with zirconium, a metal widely used for high-temperature reactor applications such as the cladding of nuclear fuel pellets. "We think this is a generic property of metal-CNT systems," he says.

"This is a development of considerable significance for nuclear materials science, where composites—particularly oxide dispersion-strengthened steels—have long been considered promising candidate materials for applications involving high temperature and high irradiation dose," says Sergei Dudarev, a professor of materials science at Oxford University in the U.K., who was not involved in this work.

Dudarev adds that this new composite material "proves remarkably stable under prolonged irradiation, indicating that the material is able to self-recover and partially retain its original properties after exposure to high irradiation dose at room temperature. The fact that the new material can be produced at relatively low cost is also an advantage."

Sergei Kucheyev, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who also was not involved in this research, says, "These results could have important technological implications. They also point to our still-limited understanding of the physics of radiation defects at interfaces in technologically relevant regimes."

Explore further: Mimicking nuclear reactor damage is goal of $5 M grant

More information: Kang Pyo So et al. Dispersion of carbon nanotubes in aluminum improves radiation resistance, Nano Energy (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2016.01.019

The Augusta Chronicle

February 29, 2016

A federal document shows that Sa­van­nah River Site, often considered for the treatment and disposal of nuclear waste, will likely get passed over as one of the destinations for about 12,000 cubic meters of radioactive material.

Residents, activists speak out on possible German waste shipment to Savannah River Site

According to the document released last week – the Fi­nal Environmental Impact State­ment for the Disposal of Greater-Than-Class C Low-Level Radioactive Waste and GTCC-Like Waste – the Department of Energy considered five alternatives for disposing of the material, including taking no action. The material contains about 160 million curies of radioactivity.

The preferred alternative is New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant geologic repository, which is being considered alongside land disposal at “generic commercial facilities.”

The environmental impact statement previously considered disposal methods at six federally owned sites, including SRS, which was an attractive option because it manages high- and low-level radioactive waste.

The potential storage site at SRS was listed as being about 2 miles northeast of the Z-Area in the north-central portion.

The waste listed in the statement is generated by activities “including production of electricity from nuclear power plants, the production and use of radioisotopes for diagnostics and treatment of cancer and other illnesses, oil and gas exploration, and other industrial uses.”

If placed on a football field, the material listed in the report would be more than 7 feet tall.

According to the statement, the waste is “not generally acceptable for near-surface disposal” and requires more stringent measures for disposal.

There is no timeline for when disposal operations would begin, but the Energy Department assumed a 2019 start date.

E&E Daily

March 1, 2016

The Department of Energy's relationship with uranium enrichment company USEC Inc. will be under the microscope this week, when Secretary Ernest Moniz visits Capitol Hill to defend the agency's budget request.

Nicknamed the "United States Earmark Corporation" by critics in Congress, USEC has engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of financial transactions with DOE since it was privatized in 1998, including funding for the $5 billion American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) project in Piketon, Ohio.

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The facility laid off 60 employees this week as Centrus Energy Corp., USEC's successor following bankruptcy, demobilized. Centrus started winding down operations last year after the Obama administration cut its contract.

Republicans who represent the job-hungry area have blasted President Obama for walking away from that project. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) accused the president of "nuclear negligence" when he shunned funding for the facility in his fiscal 2017 proposal for the second year in a row.

But bigger questions loom about a new proposal for covering the cleanup costs associated with DOE's Cold War-era uranium enrichment program.

DOE has for years bartered stockpiles of excess government-owned uranium in exchange for cleanup at the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the down-blending of highly enriched uranium in Erwin, Tenn., but lawmakers who represent uranium-rich states say the barters hurt mining efforts (Greenwire, April 22, 2015).

Moniz will be pitching a new plan to appropriators that would continue the controversial transfers while making cleanup funding mandatory. USEC grabbed attention on Capitol Hill last year when it picked former DOE Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman as its next president and CEO. During a budget day briefing earlier this month, Moniz promised a serious discussion with lawmakers "in terms of really coming to grips with" how DOE uses the USEC funds.

'Our duty'

A proposed 10 percent boost in funds for cleanup at Portsmouth has won support from Ohio's congressional delegation. The facility, which began operating in 1954, went offline in 2001. For the next decade, DOE contracted with USEC to maintain the plant and prepare it for future decontamination and decommissioning.

"The cleanup project in Portsmouth is an important component to economic development in Southeast Ohio and ACP is critical for our national and energy security," Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said in a statement. "We will still need the Administration to ensure full funding is delivered for cleanup at Portsmouth, but proposing these resources for Portsmouth is a positive step forward."

Underscoring the importance of the project, Portman invited the president of the United Steelworkers local that represents workers in Piketon to the State of the Union address in January.

"It's our duty," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told E&E Daily of the proposed $322 million funding.

"I mean, the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Defense contaminated the ground. It's the poorest part of Ohio. The jobs are good-paid union jobs. The faster we get the cleanup, the better for public health and the better for the economy of that area, so I will look at all kinds of places to find the money to do this," he said.

Since 1992, the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund has covered cleanup. But Obama's final budget request proposes a different funding method. The plan calls for authorizing $674 million of the $1.6 billion left in the USEC Fund, a dormant account that federal auditors have recommended permanently rescinding.

According to the Government Accountability Office, Congress authorized the USEC Fund for two purposes: cleanup associated with disposing of depleted uranium at the plant in Ohio and another in Paducah, Ky.; and expenses related to USEC's privatization (E&E Daily, April 15, 2015). GAO determined both those purposes have been fulfilled.

But it's up to Congress to authorize new purposes.

"We are still reviewing the Department of Energy's proposed budget to clean up Piketon," Wenstrup said in a statement. "It is critical we keep this clean-up on track, and the Administration needs to cooperate with Congress to ensure full funding, particularly since any delay only adds to the overall cost for taxpayers."

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) expressed satisfaction with the $272 million DOE has requested for Paducah. Whitfield, one of the top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, fought to prolong the life of the Paducah plant until it was shuttered in 2013 (Greenwire, May 15, 2013).

"We've had some really good levels of funding for cleanup at Paducah for a number of years now, and it is something that's vitally important, because [at] those sites it's going to take many years to complete the cleanup," Whitfield said.

"It's always difficult to find the money," he added. "U.S. Enrichment Corp. basically is gone anyway."

Appropriators want flexibility

Not all the lawmakers who represent former uranium enrichment sites are on board with DOE's plan.

The Obama administration's budget proposal includes $391 million for environmental cleanup in Tennessee. Moniz mentioned on the day the budget surfaced that the demolition project at Oak Ridge is "finishing up."

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who holds the gavel on the Appropriations panel that sets DOE's budget, secured $468 million for the project this year. But he is leery of making spending mandatory.

"The decontamination and decommissioning program should continue to be a discretionary program so that Congress can exercise oversight of this program. The appropriate authorizing committees should have an opportunity to consider the president's proposal, and I look forward to reviewing their recommendations," Alexander said.

His counterpart in the House, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), said the White House's proposal could negatively affect the way the Congressional Budget Office calculates cost.

"That would make it more difficult for us, because of the scoring," Simpson said. "How that's going to work out in the end, we don't know that yet, but it will be a question that we ask of the secretary."

The spending bill approved by House appropriators in fiscal 2016 would have rescinded all money in the USEC Fund. But that language was not in the year-end spending deal that cleared both chambers. Simpson said the final language was about giving DOE the option to restart ACP, a sensitive subject for the Ohio delegation.

"What we did is give the department flexibility to either continue the project or not continue the project, depending on what the department wanted to do," Simpson said. "We pretty much knew they wanted to close it down.

"Some people said it wasn't a smart thing to do," he added. "Obviously if you're from that region, there's jobs involved ... so we kind of left that decision up to the department."

Industry opposition

According to budget documents, the Obama administration's USEC legislation will also revive a multibillion-dollar decommissioning and decontamination tax to fund cleanup long term.

The Nuclear Energy Institute announced that the industry "categorically rejects" the proposal, which Obama has requested eight times.

"Industry recognizes that the federal government is under significant budget pressures but reinstating unjustified taxes on utility consumers while the government has failed to meet its own obligation is outrageously unfair," said Alex Flint, NEI's senior vice president of governmental affairs.

The mining industry is also likely to oppose DOE's proposed uranium releases. Two industry allies in Congress, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), have introduced legislation that would require DOE to follow a rulemaking-like process for proposed uranium releases (E&E Daily, May 22, 2015).

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has long pushed for reduced spending on nuclear weapons and has been critical of DOE efforts to prop up Centrus, is co-sponsoring the measure. Markey said he had not yet reviewed that portion of DOE's budget but backed efforts to devote USEC money to cleanup.

"Sounds good to me," he told E&E Daily.