ECA Update: October 5, 2016 |
IN THIS UPDATE: WIPP plans will go on even if Russia quits plutonium deal
NNSA
Head: ‘All Bets Are Off’ for Warhead Modernization Under Sequestration
Second rock fall discovered at nuclear waste site
Feds agree to delay possible nuclear waste shipments across Peace Bridge
US Wants to Build Idaho Facility for Warships'
Nuclear Waste
EM officials tout D&D progress
Cange to move to DC to serve in interim DOE Environmental Management job
WIPP plans will go on even if Russia quits plutonium dealAlburquerque
Journal October 3, 2016 Should the U.S. continue to hold up its end of the bargain, Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement would likely have little effect on the Department of Energy’s plans to send a parallel portion of plutonium – six metric tons – to New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
That plutonium, which is not quite weapons grade, and would be diluted and packaged to meet disposal criteria at WIPP, is not actually part of the 34 metric tons covered by the agreement. But it is being viewed as a trial run “to establish that it’s cost-effective and safe” to dilute and dispose of it at WIPP, said Ed Lyman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists.
At Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, the breakdown in the bilateral agreement may deal
a decisive blow to already deteriorated relationships between scientists at New Mexico’s national laboratories and their Russian counterparts, who had been working together to iron out the technical aspects of plutonium disposition under the deal, according to Don Hancock with the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.
Lyman said lab-to-lab cooperation had chilled in recent years as Russia has tried to assert itself as a world power.
NNSA Head: ‘All Bets Are Off’ for Warhead Modernization Under SequestrationDefense News October 4, 2016 WASHINGTON — If Congress does not ease budget caps for the coming fiscal year, it will be almost impossible to keep a quintet of vital nuclear warhead modernization program on track, warns
the head of the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA).
“If the relief we got through the Bipartisan Budget Act, which eased, modestly, the caps for fiscal year ‘16 and ‘17, are not reincarnated in some form for FY18, 19 and beyond, all bets are off. I’ll say that again: all bets are off. And god forbid if sequestration rears its ugly head again, they’re doubly off,” NNSA head Frank Klotz told an audience gathered at the
Minot21 Conference on Capitol Hill Sept. 22.
Concerns from arms of the military about the impact of sequestration are not new, but the NNSA is in a particularly precarious position, as they are laying the groundwork for a major re-working of the weapons that provide the core of America’s nuclear arsenal, while also facing major deferred infrastructure bills that have left some facilities literally crumbling around
workers.
Second rock fall discovered at nuclear waste site AMI Newswire October 5,
2016 A second rock fall has been discovered at a nuclear waste facility in New Mexico, the Department of Energy announced today.
The salt rock debris was found Monday during routine inspections of the underground cavern at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) near Carlsbad.
Officials say neither this incident, nor another rock fall discovered Sept. 27, pose a threat. “The rock fall does not cause any threat to the
workforce or the public,” a DOE spokesperson told AMI Newswire.
Both incidents occurred in areas of the facility that have not been used since 2010.
Feds agree to delay possible nuclear waste shipments across Peace BridgeBuffalo News October 5, 2016 Plans by the U.S. Department of Energy that could involve
trucking high-level liquid nuclear waste from Canada over the Peace Bridge are on hold until at least February.
Court papers filed late last month show energy officials agreed to withhold shipments until after Feb. 17, 2017, “in order to
ensure compliance with all legal and contractual obligations.”
The shipments could have started as early as last month under an agreement between the United States and Canada, but a federal lawsuit filed by seven environmental organizations against the Energy Department in
August appears to be resulting in the delay.
“The court-agreed delay in the shipment of liquid high-level nuclear waste from Canada to the Savannah River Site is a victory for the effort demanding that DOE prepare an Environmental Impact Statement on the proposal and analyze the viable
option of treating the waste in Canada,” said Tom Clements, director of the Savannah River Site Watch, which is one of the organizations suing the federal government.
US Wants to Build Idaho Facility for Warships' Nuclear Waste ABC
News
October 3, 2016 The Navy and U.S. Department of Energy want to build a
$1.6 billion facility at a nuclear site in eastern Idaho that would handle fuel waste from the nation's fleet of nuclear-powered warships through at least 2060.
The new facility is needed to keep nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines deployed, according to an
environmental impact statement made public Friday. It would be built at the Energy Department's 890-square-mile site, which includes the Idaho National Laboratory, considered the nation's primary lab for nuclear research.
The government also looked at two other alternatives:
continuing to use outdated facilities at the site or overhauling them. The effect to the environment would be small for all three options, the document concluded.
The federal government bringing nuclear waste into Idaho has been a touchy subject, but state officials supported the new
building.
EM officials tout D&D progress Daily Times October 3, 2016 At the recent National Cleanup Workshop held by the Office of Environmental Management (EM), Assistant Secretary Monica Regalbuto cited a number of EM accomplishments achieved over the past year and included the progress in deactivating and decommissioning at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant at
Piketon.
Top EM officials highlighted a variety of accomplishments
across the DOE cleanup program and outlined efforts underway to support EM’s field sites in continued progress.
“Significant progress is being made because of the men and women hard at work, in the field, every single day at each of our sites,” Regalbuto said. “During my tenure as head of the EM program, my focus has been on providing our workers in the field with the leadership and support required for success.”
Regalbuto and EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Whitney spoke to approximately 600 attendees at the National Cleanup Workshop, held Sept. 14-15 in Alexandria, Va. The
workshop, hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance with DOE and the Energy Facility Contractors Group serving as cooperating organizations, brought 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.
Cange to move to DC to serve in interim DOE Environmental Management
jobOak Ridge Today
October 4, 2016 Sue Cange will be moving at least temporarily to Washington, D.C., to become interim principal deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management. She will be temporarily serving in the role formerly filled by Mark Whitney, who has
taken a job in the private sector.
Whitney is a former manager of the Environmental Management program in Oak Ridge. He has been appointed chief operating officer of AECOM’s nuclear and environment strategic business unit. He worked for DOE for 11 years and served in both the Environmental Management office and the National Nuclear Security Administration, AECOM said in a press
release.
Cange is expected to move in the next few weeks, sometime in October, said Ben Williams, DOE spokesperson for the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.
|
|
| October 2016 | | 6 | DOE-EM Site Specific Advisory Board Meeting in Piketon, OH
|
|
| October 2016 | | 11-13 | Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association's Business Opportunities Conference in Knoxville, TN
|
|
| October 2016 | | 13 | DOE-EM Business Opportunity Forum in Knoxville,
TN |
|
| October 2016 | | 15 | DOE-EM Site Specific Advisory Board Meeting in Paducha, KY
|
|
| October 2016 | | 20 | DOE-EM Site Specific Advisory Board Meeting in Paducha, KY |
|
| October 2016 | | 26 | DOE-EM Site Specific Advisory Board Meeting in Pojoaque, NM |
|
| October 2016 | | 29 | DOE-LM 10th Aniversary of Fernald Cleanup: "Weapons to Wetlands: A Decade of Difference" in Hamilton, OH |
|
| November 2016 | | 16-18 | INVITATION ONLY 2016 Intergovernmental Meeting with DOE in New Orleans, LA |
|
Find the most recent ECA Bulletin here |
|
