ECA Staff
July 14, 2016
Last week, the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC) wrote to DOE about the need for EM to create a procedure for engaging the community on contract solicitations. “Our communities were a clear afterthought in the RFP process even though this is for a contractor to clean up the contamination in our communities with a term of up to 10 years and a value of up to $1.7B,” the
letter said. ECA members have long supported the ideal of EM recognizing the community as a cleanup partner and customer. The RCLC letter laments that planning and coordination issues have prevented the current process from working well. RCLC members said they did not hear of planned outreach to potential contractors from EM and were given very little notice for a planned Community Day. “Remember, it is the local communities that carry the highest liability for the
cleanup and operation of EM sites. It is our workforce, our homes, and our reputation that stand to lose if failure occurs due to ineffective processes,” the letter closed. For a full copy of the letter, visit regionalcoalition.org.
Update on the CISF application to NRC
The Rod Report – Waste
Control Specialists
July 12, 2016
As we all continue to enjoy the record breaking heat this summer, things are also heating up in our application process with
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
We were pleased to receive the initial NRC requests for supplemental information in late June on an application that was only submitted April 28. We’re grateful that the NRC completed an initial analysis of our 3,000-page application to construct and operate a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) in a little less than two months after it was
submitted.
Naturally we expected requests for more information, particularly since the CISF we are proposing is unique, because very few applications to construct a CISF to store spent nuclear fuel have come from a greenfield site – which is what the WCS proposal represents.
And, it is evident from the
detailed list of requests for supplemental information that the NRC is taking the application very seriously and we are happy to provide a greater level of detail on the environmental report, the safety analysis, and the physical security plan.
Last week we sent the NRC a timetable outlining when our responses will be submitted. The largest portion of the information will be submitted next week— on
July 20.
However, as the NRC is aware, some of the answers will require further discussions with them and those will likely be completed by the end of September. Likewise, one request requires us to conduct an analyses that will take us through October.
We are eager to be as timely in our responses
as they were in taking the first pass at our application. It is evident that it is being considered very seriously and that’s very encouraging.
Hopefully, as we move forward, the NRC review team will continue to ask us for additional detail as we work together to license this potentially landmark Consolidated Interim Storage Facility. And as our application is updated with supplemental information,
it’s our intent to keep the public informed as well… So stay tuned to the Rod Report.
Feds plan Boise nuclear waste meeting
Post Register
July 12, 2016
The U.S. Department of Energy is hosting a public meeting Thursday in Boise to gather input on how to deal with the country’s
growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
The Boise stop is part of an eight-city national roadshow that DOE officials began in March. It will include presentations by top DOE officials, Idaho nuclear experts, and include opportunities for public input.
The department is developing a “consent-based siting
process” that it hopes will lead to finding a locally accepted location where it can bury the nation’s growing amount of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act laid out a timeline for opening a permanent underground disposal site by the late-1990s, but it still hasn’t happened.
For decades, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain appeared to be the place where waste would be buried. But the project was ultimately thwarted by political gridlock and widespread public opposition.
Federal funding for Yucca ended in 2011, leaving the DOE to look elsewhere for places to build an underground repository. In 2012, a
government commission established to look at the waste problem recommended that DOE take a collaborative, consent-based approach with the public to build such a disposal site.
Much of the country’s roughly 70,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel continues to be stored at reactor sites where it was generated, either in pools or in dry casks. Other fuel and radioactive liquids, sludge and solids
from national defense and research efforts also are stored temporarily at several federal facilities, including Idaho National Laboratory.
“While this temporary storage is safe in the near-term, the nation needs a sustainable, long-term solution,” DOE officials wrote in a fact sheet for the meeting.
DOE
officials also hope to find places that would be receptive to storing the waste on a temporary basis, while a permanent repository is sited and built. States that have indicated interest include Texas and New Mexico.
Idaho doesn’t have any commercial nuclear power plants. But finding solutions to the nation’s nuclear waste problem remains a high-interest topic for Idahoans, because of ongoing
challenges dealing with nuclear waste stored at INL and DOE’s desert site.
Speakers on Thursday include DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek, who will discuss the department’s need for an “integrated waste management system,” and “need for a consent-based approach to siting,” according to a DOE news release. A panel will include Beatrice Brailsford of the Snake River Alliance,
Talia Martin with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Gary Peterson, a nuclear executive, and Jen Schneider, a Boise State University professor.
Work stoppage continues at Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Q13 Fox
July 12, 2016
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A rare work stoppage continues by some Hanford Nuclear Reservation workers who contend that radioactive wastes left from the production of nuclear weapons are
making them sick.
Union president Dave Molnaa, who ordered the work stoppage, said it will continue until all employees are provided with bottled air when working around all of the underground nuclear waste storage tanks on the Hanford site.
Workers have contended for years that chemical vapors escaping
from the tanks are making them sick.
The steel tanks, some dating back to World War II, contain wastes created by the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, a coalition of 15 unions that represent workers on the site near Richland, issued the “stop work”
order on Monday morning.
GAO report criticizes Energy Department’s handling of whistleblower complaints
Miami Herald
July 14, 2016
The Department of Energy’s nuclear program seldom holds its civilian contractors accountable for unlawful retaliation against whistleblowers, according to a draft Government Accountability Office report
obtained by McClatchy.
The widely critical report found the DOE has taken little or no action against contractors responsible for creating chilled work environments at nuclear sites across the country and has yet to write effective regulations for doing so.
Only two violation notices have been issued in
the past 20 years, the report notes. And employees who seek help for retaliation can be thwarted by a whistleblower protection program that’s hard to navigate without legal help, the report says.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report will be released at a news conference
Thursday held by three Democratic senators who requested the investigation in March 2014: Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts.
The senators initially had asked the GAO to get to the bottom of persistent incidents of retaliation against whistleblowers reported at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state. The scope of the GAO’s review soon
broadened to the handling of 87 contractor employee complaint files at 10 of the DOE’s largest nuclear facilities, including Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
Two whistleblowers also will be in attendance at Thursday’s news conference. Walt Tamosaitis, who was fired after raising safety concerns about the handling of radioactive waste at Hanford Reservation in Washington state, and Sandra Black, a
contractor employee at DOE’s Savannah River Site.
Hanford subcontractor URS settled a lawsuit Tamosaitis had brought for $4.1 million after he was removed as manager of research and technology at a waste vitrification plant.
Tom Carpenter, who heads the public interest group Hanford Challenge, said the
GAO report verified problems identified at the site for years.
“The GAO report validates past findings of DOE’s utter failure to establish a safe environment for employees in their nuclear facilities to raise concerns, or to hold contractors (or itself) accountable for findings of reprisals against contractors – despite having the tools to do so,’’ Carpenter said Wednesday.
He called on Congress to strengthen whistleblower protection laws. Among those changes should be punitive damages against contractors to deter reprisals against whistleblowers, he said.
Investigators say in the GAO report that Black was fired allegedly for cooperating with the agency, a claim Black made in a federal
whistleblower complaint against site contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
Black, of Martinez, Ga., worked at the Savannah River Site as head of the employee concerns program. Her job required her to evaluate concerns from contract workers about unsafe, illegal or wasteful practices. The program was supposed to protect employees who raised such questions.
But after SRNS became site contractor in 2008, Black said, she was pressured by her superiors to alter or close some investigative reports. She also was pressured to disclose the identities of employees who brought up questions, Black said.
In one instance, a senior SRNS official told her he wanted to know the name of the
“rat’’ who’d prompted an investigation of hazardous gas cylinder releases, but Black refused. She said it was vital to maintain a whistleblower’s confidentiality.
Black said she was fired in January 2015, however, after she talked with the GAO. Even though Black had never been disciplined in three decades of working at SRS, human resource representatives told her she was being fired for an
unsatisfactory job performance, her labor department complaint says.
She told McClatchy last winter that the firing had been emotionally difficult and made it nearly impossible for her to find another job.
“I’m still very much traumatized and in shock about it,’’ Black told McClatchy in February. “I had
no forewarning.’’
A spokeswoman for SRNS was not available Wednesday to respond to the GAO report.
DOE Releases Final Request for Proposal for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services Procurement
DOE
July 14, 2016
Cincinnati -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center (EMCBC) today issued a Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services. An Indefinite-Delivery Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract, utilizing Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) task orders, that may include separate Contract Line Item Numbers (CLINs) (within Task Orders) for specified cost reimbursable (no fee) items such as State
permits and Use fees, New Mexico Gross Receipts Tax, fuel, and a safe driving bonus. The Final RFP is established as a total Small Business set-aside with a five year ordering period. The current WIPP Transportation Services contracts held by CAST Specialty Transportation, Inc. and Visionary Solutions, LLC will expire on January 12, 2017 and July 27, 2017, respectively.
The WIPP Transportation
Services are for providing facilities, personnel, and equipment to operate a local terminal within the Greater Carlsbad, NM area (10 mile perimeter of Carlsbad) and provide transportation and maintenance services necessary to support the WIPP. This includes, but is not limited to, carrier services for the safe transport of contact-handled (CH) and remote-handled (RH) transuranic (TRU) wastes and mixed hazardous constituents, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and asbestos, between
various DOE sites across the country and other defense-related TRU waste generator sites to the WIPP site, near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Additional information is available via the procurement website at: https://www.emcbc.doe.gov/SEB/wipp_transportation_services/index.php
DOE has requested that all
proposals be submitted to the designated procurement address(es) no later than August 29, 2016.
Savannah River Remediation receives safety award
Augusta Chronicle
July 13, 2016
Savannah River Remediation, the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor, received the Palmetto Shining
Star Safety Award from the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.
SRR was selected for the award for its dedication to safety both on site and within the local community. According to a news release, SRR reached one million or more safe work hours without a lost-time injury or illness in 2015 and achieved a significantly lower incidence rate than reported by South Carolina in
the previous year.
“I am proud of our employees’ strong commitment to safety,” Patricia Allen, SRR Environmental, Safety and Health Quality Assurance Director, said in the release. “Earning the Palmetto Shining Star demonstrates that SRR has fostered a culture of safety and awareness, which serves as an essential foundation for the successful disposition of waste and closure of radioactive waste
tanks.”
The SCDLLR presented certificates to 18 South Carolina-based companies at a ceremony in Columbia on June 30.
SRR is composed of a team of companies led by AECOM with partners Bechtel National, CH2M and BWX Technologies. Subcontractors for the contract are AREVA, EnergySolutions and URS
Professional Solutions.
