ECA Update: April 19, 2012
Published: Thu, 04/19/12
US House subcommittee passes bill to cut DOE funding
Platts April 18, 2012 The US House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that drafts the Department of Energy's spending legislation passed their version of DOE's fiscal 2013 appropriations bill, which cuts its funding by $365 million compared with fiscal 2012 to $26.3 billion, to the full committee Wednesday.
In a voice vote with no opposition, after only 15 minutes of statements from lawmakers, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development approved the bill. It now must be taken up by the full appropriations committee, but a date has not yet been set.
Overall, the bill slashes funding by almost 4% compared with President Barack Obama's request for $27.2 billion, and shifts emphasis from renewable energy and energy efficiency to fossil fuels.
"We had to make some hard choices to reach that level," said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican and the subcommittee chairman.
"The recommendation continues to prioritize investments in our nuclear security enterprise, programs to address gasoline prices, and opportunities to advance American competitiveness," he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is back in the political cross hairs.
At issue is whether Republican Kristine Svinicki, who has criticized the current chairman, will be renominated to the five-member board before her term ends on June 30.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) took to the Senate floor Wednesday morning to pressure President Barack Obama to renominate her.
"There is no legitimate reason for Commissioner Svinicki not to have been re-nominated and re-confirmed by now. And any further delay is unacceptable," he said. If the nomination isn't sent to the Senate soon, he said, "we will be forced to conclude that the reason is related to her honorable actions as a whistleblower -- that she's being held up in retaliation for speaking up against a rogue chairman."
The U.S. Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge office today announced that its contractor, Safety and Ecology Corp., had demolished and removed four structures at the hot cells cleanup project in the middle of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's historic central campus. The work is taking place at the C/D Hot Cells at Building 3026, and the recent accomplishments took place on the C side, DOE said.
"Workers continue to prepare the remaining two structures from the building's D side for demolition, which is the last step before completion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded project," the federal agency said in the announcement. "Workers have shipped a majority of the waste from demolition of the C side and are cleaning the foundation for final radiological surveys."
The Department of Energy is not ready to commit to expanding the Hanford vitrification plant to treat all 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste, upsetting its regulators at the state of Washington.
DOE will not choose a preferred method for treating all Hanford tank waste in a massive environmental study about to be completed, officials said.
"To say that we are exceedingly disappointed is an understatement," said Suzanne Dahl, tank treatment section manager for the state Department of Ecology.
The state believes that the data in the draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement released in late 2009 make a clear environmental protection case for expanding Hanford's vitrification plant by adding a second Low Activity Waste Facility. The final version of the massive study, which has been in the works for eight years, is expected in June.
"We do not think it is forthright and genuine to put the second LAW (Low Activity Waste Facility) as the preferred alternative," said Stacy Charboneau, deputy manager for the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection. "We feel very much at DOE that as good stewards of taxpayer money, we need to look at alternatives."
Those alternatives could be less expensive or treat the waste more quickly, she said.
The $12.2 billion vitrification plant under construction originally was planned as the first of two plants to treat 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks. The waste is left from the past production of weapons plutonium.
The Hanford Advisory Board is concerned that administration budget requests for Hanford in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 fall several 100 million dollars below plans outlined in the latest lifecycle report.
The lifecycle report is required to be prepared annually to provide estimated costs and schedules to serve as a basis for agency and public discussion of cleanup priorities, including for discussions of annual budget requests.
"The board believes it is essential that DOE consider the budget levels called for in the lifecycle report as the foundation for the out year budgets," the board said in written advice to the Department of Energy and its regulators approved Friday at its Kennewick meeting.
The budget requests do not match lifecycle report amounts for cleanup of soil and ground water or for work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, the board said.
Proposed budgets do not have enough money for retrieval and treatment of temporarily buried wastes, the board said. Suspected transuranic waste -- typically debris contaminated with plutonium -- was temporarily buried starting in 1970 until the nation established a national repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Washington state officials have said they also are concerned that falling behind on transuranic waste work in 2014 will make it difficult for DOE to meet a legally required deadline for the work in 2016.
Layoffs at Hanford are a recurring event echoed for decades in this community.
While just the whisper of potential layoffs used to lead to doomsday predictions for the Tri-Cities, more recent layoffs haven't sent quite the same shudder through our region.
Have we finally reached the point where a sneeze in Hanford employment no longer means the Tri-City economy will catch the flu?
Planning for a post-Hanford economy has been talked about for decades, and the extra attention has paid off. Economic development and diversity as well as a booming agricultural industry have taken some of the sting out of losing jobs at Hanford.
But, still, the loss of close to 800 jobs at the vitrification plant in the next six months or so has ramifications. These are well-paying jobs with benefits, the kind of jobs that still lure folks to give up a good gig with a long-term employer for the promise of a few years of better money and an uncertain employment future.
Bechtel National has laid off about 550 construction workers already from the vit plant and will send out another round of notices to 200 to 300 non-construction employees this month.
RICHLAND, Wash. - The Department of Energy is releasing the sixth chapter of The Hanford Story video series to the public today. ―Plutonium Finishing Plant‖ provides viewers with a look at the history and cleanup of the highest hazard facility remaining at the Hanford Site.
The plant produced nearly two-thirds of the nation's supply of plutonium for the nuclear weapons program and was once the center of the bulls-eye of security and secrecy at the site. After the last shipment of plutonium left the plant in 2009, the razor wire came down, and cleanup of the plant continued in earnest.
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