ECA Update: September 9, 2016 |
IN THIS UPDATE: DOE Chief of Staff to Provide Keynote at 2016 National Cleanup Workshop
Photos show
nuclear facilities in dangerous disrepair
2017 Piketon cleanup funding eyed
Closing the Fuel Cycle DOE Chief of Staff to Provide Keynote at 2016
National Cleanup Workshop DOE-EM September 9, 2016 WASHINGTON, D.C. – DOE Chief of Staff Kevin Knobloch is set to provide a keynote address at the 2016 National
Cleanup Workshop, scheduled to be held Sept. 14-15 at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Va. The workshop is being hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance, and cooperating organizations for the event include DOE and the Energy Facility Contractors Group.
Knobloch joins a long list of confirmed participants for the workshop that will bring together senior DOE executives and site officials, industry executives, and other stakeholders to discuss DOE’s progress on the cleanup of the environmental legacy of the nation’s Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear weapons program.
Other confirmed participants in this year’s workshop include:
- Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Chairman, House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee
- David Klaus, Deputy Under Secretary for Management and Performance, DOE
- Monica Regalbuto, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management, DOE-EM
- Mark Whitney, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, DOE-EM
- Joyce Connery, Chairman, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
- John Kotek, Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy, DOE
- David Foster, Senior
Advisor, Office of the Secretary, DOE
- Matthew Moury, Associate Under Secretary for Environment, Health, Safety and Security, DOE
- John Hale, Director, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, DOE
- Shari Meghreblian, Deputy Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation
- Shelly Wilson, Federal Facilities Liaison, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control
- Dyan Foss, Global Managing Director Nuclear Sector, CH2M
- Michael Graham, Principal Vice President, Bechtel
- Cathy Hickey,
President, WECTEC Government Services
- Greg Meyer, Senior Vice President of Operations, Fluor
- William Morrison, Executive Vice President, Atkins North America
- Todd Wright, General Manager and Executive Vice President, AECOM Nuclear & Environment Strategic Business Unit
Managers from EM field offices and
cleanup contractors across the complex are also set to participate in this year’s workshop. Photos show nuclear facilities in dangerous disrepairCNN Politics September 7, 2016 US nuclear security facilities are dangerously decrepit and putting national security goals at risk, according
to nuclear officials who are asking Congress to back the administration's push to modernize the system.
Nuclear officials described critical utility, safety and support systems that are failing at an increasing and unpredictable rate, as well as their efforts to patch the system together until the necessary funding can be found to reinvigorate
the system.
"Safe, reliable and modern infrastructure at the National Nuclear Security Administration's national laboratories and production plants is absolutely essential to the accomplishment of our vital national security missions," NNSA Administrator Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz told the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Wednesday, according
to his prepared remarks.
Committee members called Klotz and other officials to discuss the growing backlog of work needed at the country's nuclear facilities, which include iconic places such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory. At the end of fiscal year 2015, the total cost of deferred maintenance across all NNSA property stood at $3.7 billion,
Klotz said.
There is "no obstacle that poses a bigger risk to the long-term success" of the nuclear mission than this aging infrastructure, said Klotz, who stressed that nuclear deterrence is essential not only to US national security, but to the security of US allies as well.
The physical state of the US nuclear complex is in such bad shape because many key facilities were built during World War II and intended to operate for as little as one decade, according to Morgan Smith, president and CEO of Consolidated Nuclear Security.
Today, more than half of NNSA's approximately 6,000 real property assets are over 40 years old, and nearly 30% date back to the Manhattan Project era, Klotz said.
"Many facilities and
their supporting infrastructure have exceeded or far exceeded their expected life," Smith told the committee, according to prepared remarks, "and major systems within the facilities are beginning to fail."
2017 Piketon cleanup funding
eyed Chillicothe Gazette September 7, 2016 PIKETON — As Ohio's two U.S. senators push to ensure that funding at current levels will continue past Sept. 30 for cleanup work at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, officials at the site are not expressing much concern.
Late last week, Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman asked the chairmen and ranking members on the Senate Committee on Appropriations and Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development to include funding for the Piketon work in any short-term continuing resolution that may pass through the committee or subcommittee. Funding for the cleanup had been included in the 2017 Energy and
Water appropriations bill that was passed by the Senate earlier in the year, but the bill still has not been acted upon by the House of Representatives.
"As the fiscal year ends (Sept. 30), it does not appear that Congress will pass the fiscal year 2017 Energy and Water appropriations bill by the
end of September," the two wrote in a joint letter to Sens. Thad Cochran and Barbara Mikulski on the Committee on Appropriations and Sens. Lamar Alexander and Dianne Feinstein on the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. "We ask that the committee again provide anomaly that sustains the current level of funding for (decontamination and decommissioning) efforts at (Piketon) by providing an anomaly in any short-term continuing resolution the Senate considers. We remain committed to working
with the committee to ensure a final appropriation that fully supports the ongoing cleanup efforts at (Piketon)."
A continuing resolution is a temporary spending measure that legislators can use to continue funding programs until both the House and Senate can agree on a final budget for the next
fiscal year that also meets with approval from the president.
Closing the Fuel CycleThe Energy Times September 8, 2016
Probably everyone reading this article recycles something each week as they put out their trash. It has become a no-brainer. People get it. Recycle and re-purpose materials and you extend the life of landfills saving everyone money.
It also is the right thing to do. But when it comes to the used nuclear fuel from our commercial reactors, our long-range plan is simply to bury it. That has been our policy for decades, but changing the policy may be something the next president can bring about. We have in this country more than 70,000 tons of used fuel stored at more than 75 sites in 33 states, and the 100
U.S. commercial reactors produce about 2,000 additional tons of used fuel each year.
Because we don’t recycle this nuclear material, it would take nine Yucca Mountain repositories by the turn of the next century to house all of the used fuel being
produced.
Getting one Yucca has proved daunting, let alone nine. In the meantime, dozens of states like Georgia and South Carolina spend hundreds of millions of dollars to let the material sit in highly engineered casks and pools at plant sites. And these have to be replaced every 100 years – for
about 1 million years. Definitely not sustainable.
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2016 National Cleanup Workshop
| September 2016 | | 14 | House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Event in Washington, DC |
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| September
2016 | | 15 | | DOE-NE Consent-based Siting Summary of Public Input Meeting in Washington, DC |
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| November 2016 | | 16-18 | INVITATION ONLY 2016 Intergovernmental Meeting with DOE in New Orleans, LA
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