ECA Update: February 28, 2012
Published: Tue, 02/28/12
Two weeks ago, as the National Nuclear Security Administration announced it was killing funding for a proposed new plutonium-handling building at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency asked the lab to begin thinking about an alternative plan.
For at least nine years, the agency had insisted the building, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, was vital to maintaining the United States' nuclear deterrent.
For at least four years, it has been clear that spiraling cost estimates put the project at risk.
For at least a year, it has been clear that mounting federal budget pressures, along with skepticism from Congress, left the project in doubt.
And the NNSA and the lab are only now beginning to think about Plan B?
The past few weeks have been brutal for Los Alamos, the lab that brought atomic weaponry to the world and has long stood as a bastion of our nation's nuclear weapons expertise. But its problems today are of the nuclear enterprise's own making.
On Feb. 13, the NNSA said it was killing the CMRR-NF project. Days later, an independent federal review panel released a scathing report describing the federal government's management of its nuclear labs, especially Los Alamos, as "dysfunctional," saying micromanagement by federal bureaucrats has driven up costs and harmed the labs' ability to conduct science.
Then last Tuesday, the lab announced plans to begin cutting between 400 and 800 jobs, as much as 11 percent of its workforce.
In testimony before Congress on Feb. 16, former weapons program manager C. Paul Robinson, a veteran of both Sandia and Los Alamos national labs, spoke bluntly and with a touch of anger and what sounded like more than a little sadness of the weapons program's decline.
Robinson described an overbearing bureaucratic process that is essentially incapable of making decisions. "Bureaucratic organizations," Robinson said in the written version of his testimony, "are not an effective structure to be used for organized activities or businesses that are required to be innovative."
"I'm frustrated," Robinson, now retired and living in Longmont, Colo., told me when I called him last week to talk about the labs' problems.
The lack of a Plan B for the collapsing CMRR-NF project is a worthy example.
By the end of the current fiscal year, data provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration suggest taxpayers will have spent at least $450 million not building it. Essentially all that money has been spent on design work and related studies.
Robinson argues that excessive, confusing and at times contradictory safety and security requirements imposed by federal managers drove up the costs. "The dollars per square foot have priced (the building) beyond anything on God's Earth," Robinson said.
The problems of CMRR-NF are deep and complex, but Robinson's explanation is almost certainly at least a part of the problem.
Whatever the cause, though, what sort of a dysfunctional process did the lab and its NNSA managers have that prevented them from seeing the looming problem and begin to think about alternatives for doing the national security work they kept describing as "vital"?
Former Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker, now at Stanford, submitted to the congressional committee a written statement that bears repeating:
"I first did plutonium research in the CMR building in 1965, when it was only 13 years old," Hecker wrote.
"It is now 60 years old and it must be replaced with a modern plutonium research laboratory to keep our plutonium expertise for stockpile stewardship. Yet, we have allowed an unbalanced regulatory approach to drive the price tag to 5 to 6 billion dollars, far beyond what such a facility should cost and would cost in other countries. Moreover, instead of working to create a smaller, agile nuclear weapon production complex that retains the critical skills needed for our deterrent, we have an outdated, cumbersome complex that cannot easily respond to either the modernization or the effective downsizing of our arsenal."
Whether Hecker is right that we need a modern plutonium laboratory is a subject of debate. That we have frittered away $450 million without resolving the question, and are only now thinking about what Plan B might look like, captures the problems of Los Alamos and NNSA in a nutshell.
The Management of Post-Recovery Act Workforce Transition at Office of Environmental Management Sites DOE Inspector General February 22, 2012 We conducted an audit to determine whether the Department of Energy (Department) had developed and was properly executing an effective plan to transition its environmental remediation contractor workforce to a post-American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) posture. We found that the Department and its contractors had developed plans to transition its workforce as Recovery Act funds were exhausted. Our review of Recovery Act hiring practices at two major Environmental Management managed sites disclosed that, to the extent practicable, both sites took up front measures to control future separation costs in expectation that the workforce would be reduced at the completion of the Recovery Act projects. However, the transition approach adopted at the Savannah River Site has resulted in unnecessary payments of nearly $7.7 million to separated contractor employees. Inconsistencies in the approach used by the Hanford and Savannah River Sites to address workforce notice requirements, despite similarities in the number and mission of workers being displaced at the two sites, were not fully justified by management, led to increased transition costs at Savannah River Site and will likely result in disparate treatment of separating employees. We made recommendations to ensure that transition costs are limited to those required and necessary and similarly situated workers are treated with reasonable consistency. DOE Inspector General: Savannah River Contractors Overpaid $7.7 Million in Stimulus Funds Nuclear Street February 28, 2012 Department of Energy cleanup efforts at the Savannah River site compensated temporary contractor employees more than was required, the agency's inspector general found in a recent report.
As part of the economic stimulus bill passed in 2009, DOE's Office of Environmental Management received $6 billion to hire temporary workers and accelerate cleanup projects. Federal rules require the agency to give workers either advanced notice or additional pay when funding for the estimated 4,450 temporary positions expires. By choosing the additional salary option, the inspector general said, Savannah River made $7.7 million in payments that were unnecessary.
"Even though not required by statute or departmental order, Savannah River elected to provide separating employees with 60 days of pay rather than giving them the required advance termination notices. This decision resulted in payments for which the department received no direct benefit," read the report dated Feb. 22.
In contrast to the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions employees at the site in South Carolina, the report notes temporary employees working for CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company at Washington's Hanford site were given notice instead of the extra pay. The practice of giving notice a certain period in advance or providing pay for a similar amount of work time stems from a law that requires the department and its contractors to give employees advanced warning of layoffs.
Overnight Energy: Jackson, Chu and Salazar face Congress Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman, The Hill February 27, 2012 State of play: The Obama administration's top energy and environmental officials will take to Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the president's budget.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson get things started with 10 a.m. testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, respectively.
At 2 p.m., Energy Secretary Steven Chu will testify before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
While all of three of the hearings focus on President Obama's fiscal 2013 budget request (read more about that here and here), expect lawmakers to delve into a slew of other issues.
Hanford contractor has plan for difficult work (w/ video) Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 27, 2012 RICHLAND -- Washington Closure Hanford has settled on a plan for one of its most hazardous environmental cleanup assignments -- retrieving radioactive waste dropped down long pipes buried vertically in the ground.
The Department of Energy contractor is proposing a keep-it-simple approach for the underground pipes at the 618-10 Burial Ground. It would use mostly commercially available equipment and technology to treat the waste underground -- breaking it up and in some cases grouting it -- before it's brought to the surface and packaged for disposal.
"It's doable, and it's safe," said Larry Gadbois, scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator on the project.
Work already has begun to dig up waste at the 618-10 Burial Ground, which with the slightly newer 618-11 Burial Ground, has been expected to have some of the most hazardous materials in the burial grounds near the Columbia River.
Study shows radioactivity from SRS increasing but DOE disagrees Anna Dolianitis, The Aiken Standard February 24, 2012 A new study released in Augusta this week by a group of environmental organizations suggests that radioactivity and negative health impacts near the Savannah River Site are increasing and that further investigation is necessary.
The report, authored by Joseph J. Mangano, MPH, MBA, who directed the Radiation and Public Health Project, followed a study of contamination levels at or near SRS and trends on local health status.
"It appears that in the past decade, levels of most types of radioactivity at the Savannah River Site are rising, as are rates of radiosensitive diseases," Mangano said in a press release. "The Energy Department and local residents should work together to understand reasons why these are occurring as cleanup begins at the site."
DOE spokesperson Jim Giusti said that the report has not yet officially been shared with DOE, but DOE disagrees with the findings.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Elected officials and their representatives from five counties and one city gathered Wednesday morning to discuss the future focus and work of the new Board of Mayors/Executive group that took the place of the recently dissolved Local Oversight Committee.
Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan, Roane County Executive Ron Woody, Anderson County Mayor Myron Iwanski, Meigs County Mayor Garland Lankford, Knox County Community Outreach Manager Jonathan Griswold and Rhea County Executive George Thacker met for two hours Wednesday morning at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Oak Ridge office on Emory Valley Road.
"This is an orientation meeting to learn about the new five-year oversight agreement," Beehan said of the new group and the Department of Energy-related oversight once done by the LOC.
"We're going to make this work because it's important for the whole region," he added.
Sue Cange, DOE's Oak Ridge interim manager for Environmental Management, gave an overview of the department's work to clean up the Oak Ridge Reservation. TDEC and officials with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency also provided overviews of how their jobs interface with DOE and local officials.
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