ECA Update: February 22, 2012
Published: Wed, 02/22/12
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (WTW) -- The nation's premier nuclear facility unveiled plans Tuesday to shed as many as 800 employees, or nearly 10 percent of its regular permanent workforce, as it faces a $300 million budget cut this year and the prospect of continued reductions.
Los Alamos National Laboratory said it has submitted a plan to reduce its regular full-time staff of 7,585 by between 400 and 800 this spring through "a voluntary separation program." It also employs more than 3,000 contractors, students and other lab workers but they would not be affected "at this time," a spokeswoman said.
Lab Director Charlie McMillan said plans to offer voluntary buyouts are part of "an attempt to reduce the risks of involuntary layoffs." He appointed a committee to look for savings last year after Congress cut the lab's budget to $2.2 billion from $2.5 billion.
"When combined with a suppressed attrition rate for the past three years, our current budget and future outlook require significant cost-cutting," he said in a statement. The plan must be approved by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation's nuclear facilities.
The announcement came after the Obama administration announced last week that it planned to defer for at least five years construction of a controversial $6 billion plutonium research lab at Los Alamos. Construction had been expected to begin this year on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility.
County officials said they were told the deferment would result in a loss of 1,000 planned construction jobs.
"It's disappointing because last year we were told that these missions were key to the defense of our country," said Sharon Stover, chairwoman of the Los Alamos County Council. "I'm not sure what's changed in the last few months, but we have a delegation that is going to D.C. next month. ... We hope our congressional leaders can get us some answers and reverse the trend."
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said he was concerned about the impact that budget cuts would have at the lab.
"LANL is critical to our national security and state's economy and I will continue to push for adequate funding at both of New Mexico's national lab," Udall said in a statement.
Watchdog groups, however, said the cuts were good news.
"The post-Cold War nuclear weapons missions at LANL have grown much too much over the past 17 years," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group. "Not only have the missions grown, but so has the cost per scientist."
Stover said Los Alamos and the surrounding communities are particularly upset about funding cuts for cleanup of legacy waste. The Obama administration last year sought $363 million to remove thousands of barrels of radioactive waste stored aboveground on the 40-square mile lab complex, but the final budget from Congress appropriated just half of that.
The potential danger from the waste gained national attention last summer when the largest wildfire in New Mexico history lapped at the edges of lab property.
The lab also is the economic driver for the city and surrounding communities in northern New Mexico. About 40 percent of the lab's nearly 12,000 total workforce lives in the county, which has about 17,950 residents.
Maintaining the health of the lab is the county's No. 1 goal for economic vitality, Stover said.
The lab last offered the buyouts in 2008, when 431 out of 8,110 regular permanent employees volunteered to leave.
"We were successful when we took similar action in 2008," McMillan said. "I am fully aware of the economic footprint this lab has in northern New Mexico, and we're taking every possible step to minimize the impacts."
McMillan said details of the separation packages would not be disclosed until the plan is approved.
Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to reduce its workforce by 400 to 800 employees this spring through voluntary buyouts.
In an all-hands meeting Tuesday, LANL Director Charles McMillan outlined a "voluntary separation program" that avoids forced layoffs.
The plan must be approved by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
"If enough people participate, we feel better about not having to do something involuntary," McMillan said.
According to lab spokesman Fred deSousa, McMillan emphasized that the process was voluntary. "He said nobody can volunteer you. Your manager can't volunteer you," deSousa said after the meeting.
Wash. Officials Shocked By Energy Secretary's Hanford Remark Anna King, NPR February 21, 2012
PASCO, Wash. - Washington state officials are reacting negatively to the possibility that there might be a delay to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's massive waste treatment plant. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu raised that prospect in comments last week.
Secretary Chu said Hanford's waste treatment plant has so many technical issues and the federal budget is so strained that the schedule to get it built by 2019 might slip.
That was news to many Washington state officials in the Department of Ecology and the Attorney General's office. Both agencies helped negotiate the new consent decree two years ago in a federal court in Spokane.
And U.S. Senator Patty Murray -- on a visit to Pasco, Washington -- said she plans on holding the Department of Energy accountable to the promised timeline.
If Energy Secretary Steven Chu isn't glancing nervously over his shoulder these days, he ought to be.
That's Washington state breathing down his neck, and that's never been comfortable for the Department of Energy. Chu recently told Congress that there is a risk the Hanford vitrification plant might not be operating as scheduled in 2019.
The admission came under questioning earlier this month by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and you can bet Chu's answer was was heard in Olympia.
We haven't yet heard how Gov. Chris Gregoire or state Attorney General Rob McKenna will react, but based on past performance, the Obama administration can expect some backlash.
Here's what Gregoire told DOE in 2006, when the funding request for the vit plant fell short of needs:
"Washington will not sit idly by while the United States government breaks its promises to the people of our state and puts our health and resources at risk." RICHLAND, Wash. - The Department of Energy is releasing the fourth chapter of The Hanford Story today to the public. "Tank Waste Cleanup" focuses on the work conducted by the Office of River Protection to retrieve, treat and ultimately dispose of the 56 million gallons of Hanford's tank waste.
The video describes the processes used to transfer tank waste from single-shell to double-shell tanks, as well as explaining how the Waste Treatment Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, will ultimately treat the waste in order to prepare it for safe, long-term storage.
We are glad to see that the Obama administration's proposed budget will continue the missions at the Savannah River Site, including the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility. Clearly the administration, as do our South Carolina senators and representatives in Washington, understands the value and importance of SRS to our nation.
There has been a move to end the MOX program. Earlier this month, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., introduced a bill that would have reduced funding for the nuclear weapons programs by $100 billion, essentially ending MOX. The bill had 35 co-sponsors, but South Carolina legislators were not among them.
Missed MOX deadline costly unless federal law is changed Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle February 16, 2012 The National Nuclear Security Administration wants to change federal law to avoid paying a $100 million penalty to the state of South Carolina for missing deadlines involving its mixed oxide fuel facility at Savannah River Site.
The agency -- in an overview of the U.S. plutonium disposition program attached to its fiscal 2013 budget -- notes that the Atomic Energy Defense Act, which authorized the project, specifies a series of now-missed deadlines, with penalties.
In particular, there was a Jan. 1, 2012, deadline for the $4.8 billion plant to begin its mission of making commercial nuclear reactor fuel that includes small amounts of plutonium from surplus nuclear warheads.
In addition to requiring payments to South Carolina, missing the deadline also requires the government to remove at least 1 metric ton of plutonium from the state by Jan. 1, 2014.
"Such a requirement is not possible to satisfy," the report says. "Based on this statute, the Department could incur additional expenditure of resources in order to comply with requirements triggered by the obsolete notional dates under the current law."
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's most recent round of inspections at the U.S. Energy Department's mixed oxide fuel facility yielded no violations or criticisms, according to a copy of the quarterly report released Monday.
The $4.8 million MOX facility, scheduled to open at Savannah River Site in 2016, is designed to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium by using small amounts to make fuel for commercial reactors.
Inspections conducted from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 evaluated construction of principal structures and included quality assurance activities, certification of workers and contractors and other factors.
Los Alamos National Laboratory Selects Small Businesses for Nuclear Waste Services Lab Manager Magazine February 17, 2012 LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, February 16, 2012--Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced it has selected four small businesses to compete for up to $200 million in services related to safely packaging Cold War-era wastes for final disposal.
The companies--Environmental Dimensions, Inc.; North Wind, Inc.; Navarro Research and Engineering, Inc.; and Portage, Inc.--will now use a streamlined process to bid for a number of individual tasks under this "master task order agreement." Tasks include such activities as handling waste containers, transporting them to licensed disposal facilities, and providing verification and certification of delivery.
The wastes include soils removed from cleanup sites such as canyons or landfills, debris from the demolition of old buildings, and chemical or other hazardous wastes. Some of these materials may include trace or low levels of radioactive material.
Energy Secretary goes 'virtual' at nuclear-themed visit to ORNL The Oak Ridger February 19, 2012 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu arrived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory Wednesday afternoon on a quick, nuclear-themed visit that included a tour of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, or CASL.
The consortium, also known as the Nuclear Modeling and Simulation Energy Innovation Hub, was created in 2010 to use advanced capabilities of the world's most powerful computers to improve nuclear reactor design and engineering. The CASL hub, led by ORNL, includes partners from DOE national laboratories, universities and industry, who are collaborating on research to improve the performance of nuclear power plants.
After a visit to CASL, Chu also toured ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, located behind the National Transportation Research Center in Knoxville.
"We were honored by the opportunity to host Secretary Chu at ORNL, and we appreciate his enthusiasm for our leadership of the Nuclear Innovation hub," ORNL Director Thom Mason stated in a news release.
GAO Report: Observations on NNSA's Management and Oversight of the Nuclear Security Enterprise The Government Accountability Office February 16, 2012 NNSA has successfully ensured that the nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable in the absence of underground nuclear testing, accomplishing this complicated task by using state-of-the-art facilities as well as the skills of top scientists. Nevertheless, NNSA does not have reliable enterprise-wide management information on program budgets and costs, which potentially increases risk to NNSA's programs. For example, in June 2010, GAO reported that NNSA could not identify the total costs to operate and maintain essential weapons activities facilities and infrastructure. In addition, in February 2011, GAO reported that NNSA lacks complete data on, among other things, the condition and value of its existing infrastructure, cost estimates and completion dates for planned capital improvement projects, and critical human capital skills in its contractor workforce that are needed for its programs. As a result, NNSA does not have a sound basis for making decisions on how to most effectively manage its portfolio of projects and other programs and lacks information that could help justify future budget requests or target cost savings opportunities. NNSA recognizes that its ability to make informed decisions is hampered and is taking steps to improve its budget and cost data. 2012 National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program Draft Agenda Has Been Updated The National Environmental Justice Conference The 2012 National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program draft agenda has been updated and is now available here.
You can register for the conference, see the draft agenda, and get other information on the conference here. |
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