ECA Update: November 9, 2012
Published: Fri, 11/09/12
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Consensus Forming for Lame Duck Deal To Delay Sequester Cuts
John T. Bennett, Federal Times
November 8, 2012
John T. Bennett, Federal Times
November 8, 2012
Lawmakers hear the clock ticking toward deep defense and domestic spending cuts, and senior members of both parties appear poised to pass a measure during a lame duck session that would add additional time to that clock.
Senior congressional Democrats and Republicans are talking openly about kicking down the road the date that would trigger separate $500 billion, 10-year cuts to planned defense and domestic spending.
Senate Budget Committee member Mark Warner, D-Va., said Nov. 8 that lawmakers hope to "make a down payment" during a coming session-ending lame duck period "to avoid sequestration."
He was referring to a budgeting tactic to reduce nonexempt defense and domestic accounts on Jan. 2 short of a $1.2 trillion debt-paring bill or a measure that extends the sequester countdown clock.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also continues talking about the need to delay those cuts, which economists say -- when coupled with expiring tax cuts -- could send the U.S. economy into a new recession.
"Lame duck Congresses aren't known for doing big things and probably shouldn't do big things, so I think the best you can hope for is a bridge," Boehner told CNN on Nov. 4.
Lawmakers during the lame duck period would have just a few weeks to pass a deficit-cutting bill that would have to cover defense spending, tax reform, domestic entitlement program reform and a score of other prickly, complex issues.
Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., House Budget Committee vice ranking member, also has recently called for a short-term delay.
Speaking at a forum in Washington on Oct. 16, Schwartz said it would be "very tough" for Congress to pull off such Herculean work in just six weeks. She called on lawmakers to try to pass a smaller legislative package that deals with "the things we agree on," such as extending middle class tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration and establishing a sustainable growth rate for the Medicare program.
Boehner, in remarks the day after President Barack Obama's larger-than-predicted Nov. 7 re-election win, sounded ready to cut a deal on a massive debt-cutting bill soon after the new Congress is seated.
"Mr. President, this is your moment," Boehner said. "We are ready to be led."
But Boehner wants that Obama leadership to occur after the new Congress takes office in January, hence the need for a sequester delay.
Just hours after an election that gave Obama a second term and saw Democrats gain House and Senate seats, Boehner was talking about the kind of "big deal," as Obama often calls it, which would include tax reform, some new revenues and entitlement program changes.
But the new Congress should write it, Boehner said, because "it will take some time."
Armed Services panel could bypass Senate floor for defense bill
Jeremy Herb, The Hill
November 7, 2012
Jeremy Herb, The Hill
November 7, 2012
The Senate Armed Services Committee is considering bypassing the Senate floor and taking the Defense authorization bill straight to conference committee, sources tell The Hill.
The move is only being weighed as a contingency option, and the committee's first preference is to get the bill passed through regular order during the lame-duck session, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee's deliberations.
But preparations are being made to skip the floor if needed so the bill can pass before the end of the year, continuing a streak of 50 years that the defense policy bill has been signed into law.
"Chairman [Carl] Levin (D-Mich.) is going to be looking at all the options he's got," said one defense source. "He doesn't want to have a big asterisk under his tenure of the chairmanship of not being able to get the defense authorization bill done."
Levin's office declined comment for this story.
Both Levin and House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) want to get the bill passed, and the disagreements between the two chambers are relatively minor compared to prior years.
The bill has been stalled by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) since it passed out of committee in May. Reid didn't want to put the bill on the floor in the height of the election season, in part to avoid GOP attacks on the president over sequestration cuts to defense.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, railed against Reid several times on the floor for not bringing the bill up in the summer months.
Levin has urged Reid to give the defense bill floor time in the lame-duck sesssion, and he may get it amid the fiscal cliff deliberations. But the bill would take several days with many amendments, and the session will be jam-packed with other high-priority pieces of legislation.
While the election is over, the bill could still be stymied by the sequestration fight that will be a key part of the fiscal cliff debate, sources say.
If the authorization bill were to bypass the Senate floor, the House and Senate panels would likely convene an informal conference committee to hash out their differences.
Once an agreement was reached, the bill could move forward in two ways, sources say. The House could introduce the conference report as a new bill, pass it and send it to the Senate, or the Senate could strike the full defense bill and insert the new language on the floor.
The Senate would still have to pass the bill, of course, but taking the alternative routes could avoid the lengthy amendment process on the floor.
The House passed the Defense authorization bill in May.
Sources stressed that both committees -- whose staffs have started meeting about the conference process -- want to avoid exercising the option of bypassing the Senate floor, a process nicknamed "ping-pong."
But the committees also insist that the defense bill, which sets military policy and provides things such as pay raises for troops and war funding, must pass this year.
While there are frequently controversial measures in the authorization bill, it nearly always passes with large bipartisan majorities. The Senate Armed Services Committee passed it unanimously in May.
One of the biggest differences between the House and Senate bills is the overall topline funding number, as the two sides are approximately $3 billion apart on a bill that tops $600 billion. That fight has roots in the Budget Control Act's reduction of military spending.
There are also several policy issues in the House bill, such as the banning of gay marriage ceremonies on military bases and the creation of an East Coast missile defense site, which would have to be reconciled with opposition in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The contingency plan for the defense bill is not a new idea. The Armed Services committees had to scramble when the "don't ask, don't tell" fight stalled the defense authorization bill in 2010.
Congress wound up passing a new version of the authorization bill without the "don't ask" language in the final days of the lame-duck session, while repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military in separate legislation.
A New Approach to Military Nuclear Waste
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
November 6, 2012
The United States has many pressing nuclear waste problems, but the worst may be the leftovers from the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Unlike the wastes from civilian reactors, the military wastes are liquids and sludges stored in underground tanks in environmentally sensitive areas. Scores of tanks have leaked some of the material into the dirt. And there is no debate about how the wastes might be repurposed; they have already been scavenged for useful materials like uranium and plutonium.
So for decades, the goal has been to solidify them by mixing them with glass, a process called vitrification, so the material can eventually be buried in a repository. With great difficulty and delay, the Energy Department opened a factory to do just that in 1996 at its Savannah River nuclear reservation near Aiken, S.C.
In 1989, the Energy Department signed an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State to start work on solidification at the Hanford nuclear reservation on the Columbia River. The process was to begin by 1999, but the pact has repeatedly been rewritten as deadlines were missed.
Savannah River had been built and operated by DuPont, a chemical company, and its wastes were simpler and easier to handle there. Hanford had been run by many different contractors, and its wastes had many components that had to be removed before the remainder could go to the glass factory.
The federal government has drafted plans for a new glass plant at Hanford several times but dropped them because of technical problems. A plant under construction now, described as being more than 60 percent complete, was originally supposed to cost $5.6 billion but its price tag is now put at over $12 billion, not counting operating costs. It is supposed to run for decades, with the start date now estimated at 2019.
But given the extraordinary delays and cost increases, a start-up, Kurion of Irvine, Calif., sees an opening. Kurion has already done nuclear work at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, where it built a system to filter cesium out of contaminated water at the plant's stricken reactors. So far it has not convinced the Energy Department to hire it at Hanford, however.
In the vitrification process, the wastes and glass are typically heated to melting temperature by giant electrodes submerged in the mixture. But the electrodes will eventually wear out -- a problem if the plant has to run for decades and is so radioactive that the maintenance work has to be done by remote control, noted Richard Keenan, Kurion's vice president for engineering.
So Kurion uses inductive heating, in which an object that can conduct electricity is put in a chamber surrounded by coils. This create a fluctuating magnetic field that generates heat without physical contact. "If there is no contact with electrodes, there are no corrosivity concerns,'' Mr. Keenan said.The technique could be used for tank wastes and for soil contaminated by tank leaks.
Another twist is meant to address the nature of the tanks at Hanford. They accepted waste that was strongly acidic, but the tanks are made of ordinary carbon steel, which could not tolerate the acidity.
So workers added a neutralizing agent that led the wastes to divide: a heavy sludge falls out of the mixture and lines the bottom, and a liquid fills the top. Kurion is trying to convince the Energy Department that the liquid should be filtered with materials like the ones it used at Fukushima because when those have captured much of the radioactive materials, they are easy to melt into glass.
The company is also suggesting glass mixtures that are tailored to the waste. The goal is to make glass that will not leach its radioactive contents in millenniums to come. With careful attention to glass chemistry, Mr. Keenan said, technicians can get more radioactive material into each batch without spoiling the glass.
So far, the Energy Department seems resolved to complete the main vitrification plant. But a spokeswoman, Lori M. Gamache, said, "At the appropriate time we will evaluate whether their technologies represent cost-effective methods of vitrifying waste.'' She said the department planned to submit a report on bulk vitrification, the technology for handling contaminated dirt, in two years.
At the end of the vitrification process, the molten glass cools in stainless steel containers that are then welded shut. What happens to those is still an open question.
At one point they were supposed to go to Yucca Mountain, a proposed national waste repository in Nevada, but the Obama administration shelved that plan. The federal government has not proposed an alternative site and has no method in place to select one.
Storing Nuclear-Bomb Waste in Glass
Andrew Morse, The Wall Street Journal
November 5, 2012
In early 2011, John Raymont was hoping his company, Kurion Inc., could break into the business of cleaning up nuclear waste, an industry dominated by large multinationals and mostly off limits to start-ups.
Then in March, an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing its reactors to dangerously overheat. The crisis gave Mr. Raymont an idea.
His company could use its waste-treatment technology to build an ad hoc system to filter radiation from contaminated water and recycle it to cool the power station's reactors.
Within months, the Irvine, Calif., company's system was the backbone of a successful effort to stabilize the crippled plant. "Without Kurion's system," said Dr. Shunichi Suzuki, an executive at plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co., "we would really be in trouble."
Now, Kurion is hoping to build on its Japanese success by getting a piece of one of the biggest and most difficult nuclear waste problems facing the U.S.: mopping up the radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state, where nuclear weapons were made decades ago.
Last month, Kurion took a step toward that goal, opening a testing facility at the site. Earlier this year, the company signed a contract with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility, an important part of getting its technology approved for government work.
The cleanup at Hanford remains a formidable challenge. Roughly 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical sludge sit in underground tanks at the site, where the government produced plutonium for the first nuclear bomb, as well as other weapons during World War II and the Cold War. Some of those tanks have leaked, raising concerns that radioactive waste could threaten the nearby Columbia River.
The Department of Energy has slowed the pace of construction on key parts of a $12.2 billion waste treatment plant being built by Bechtel National Inc., a unit of Bechtel Group, because of questions about their safety and design, raising concerns of a delay in starting a cleanup that is expected to last about four decades.
One of Kurion's products might be able to help because it filters radioactive particles from liquids such as the waste at Hanford.
The company's substance , which it calls "ion specific media," can target specific atoms. The material has another attractive property: It can easily be melted into glass, a process known as "vitrification" that traps the radioactive particles and minimizes potential leaks.
The company pairs the material with a system for straining radioactive waste. Once filled with radioactive waste, electricity is pulsed through the system's canisters, melting the filters into glass for safe storage.
Kurion isn't the only company with technologies designed to treat nuclear waste. Atlanta-based Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc., PESI 0.00%a subcontractor to another project at Hanford, uses different technologies, including a supercompactor, to reduce the volume of contaminated material before encasing it for storage.
But few technologies are as battle-tested as Kurion's.
In January 2011, Kurion opened a research-and-development facility in Rolla, Mo., to test its concepts. Its objectives began to change on March 11, 2011, when a magnitude-9 earthquake killed roughly 16,000 people in northern Japan. The resulting tsunami crippled the pumping systems at Fukushima Daiichi that cooled the plant's reactors, triggering the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
As Mr. Raymont monitored the unfolding crisis, he began to think Kurion's technology could treat the plant's contaminated water and allow it to be recirculated to cool its overheating reactors.
"We're a start-up," Mr. Raymont said in an interview. "Our business concept is changing."
On April 4, 2011, a Kurion team arrived in Japan and described a system that ran contaminated water through a system customized to the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Kurion's filter would strain out radioactive cesium but let clean water pass through to be redirected to the plant's dangerously hot reactors.
By late April, Tepco had signed a contract for Kurion to assist in the cleanup project, placing the little company shoulder-to-shoulder with huge companies such as Japan's Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., and France's Areva SA. Kurion received its initial funding from venture capital firms New York-based Lux Capital and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Firelake Capital Management.
Shortly after, Kurion sent Gaëtan Bonhomme, a French materials scientist who had earned an M.B.A. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to oversee the installation of the water decontamination system. The Kurion team also trained local employees to operate the system.
As the Fukushima Daiichi project quiets down, Kurion is turning its attention to the U.S. The process is long; getting a contract to work at a U.S. government site can take years and new technology requires extensive testing.
The company plans to use its new facility at the Hanford Site to demonstrate the techniques it used in Japan will also work in environments such as Hanford. It will also try processing some of the low-level radioactive waste stored at the site to prove it works.
Kurion is also expanding the types of waste it can treat. Earlier this year the company bought a business that converts soil, debris and other material contaminated by radioactivity or hazardous chemicals into glass. The business, called GeoMelt, also gives Kurion another shot at government work; it is already being considered for use at Hanford.
Energy secretary to move forward with Hanford vit plant
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
November 9, 2012
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
November 9, 2012
Energy Secretary Steven Chu plans to move the Hanford vitrification plant project forward with new teams to take focused looks at technical issues and a separate evaluation of opportunities for more efficient or faster operations at the plant.
He made the announcement Thursday in a memo to employees of the Department of Energy's Hanford Office of River Protection.
Chu has taken a personal interest in resolving issues at the plant, assembling a hand-picked group of experts that he spent several days with at Hanford in September. They helped develop the plan announced Thursday to get the project on track.
DOE earlier said that it would not be able to build the plant for the $12.2 billion planned or have it operating as legally required by 2019 because of technical issues, some of them related to the safe and efficient operation of the plant.
The plant is being built to treat for disposal up to 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste left from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Construction on parts of the plant that will handle high-level radioactive waste has been slowed or stopped while technical issues are addressed.
"I am confident that with this increased focus on the resolution of technical challenges, the addition of expertise from academia, national laboratories and industry, and some additional analysis and testing, we will be able to resolve the remaining technical challenges and ensure the mission will be accomplished safely and efficiently," Chu said in the memo.
Technical issues have been "wrestled" into five groups and five new teams will drill down into the issues, said David Huizenga, senior adviser for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which oversees Hanford work.
The teams will focus on finalizing the design of the vitrification plant, said Langdon Holton, of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of Chu's experts.
"The secretary wants a path forward in the next few months," Huizenga said.
However, some of the work to resolve technical issues could take several years to close out, Holton said. Among the most time consuming will be a new plan to do full-scale mixing testing of some of the plant's tanks that will hold high-level radioactive waste rather than the large-scale testing DOE agreed to two years ago.
A new high-bay laboratory -- which will be donated to Washington State University Tri-Cities -- was built for the large-scale testing and now tanks that later will be moved to the vitrification plant will be tested outside the building.
No major changes to parts of the vitrification plant already built are expected as the design is finalized, Holton said. The design changes instead should affect components of the plant yet to be built or installed, he said. Construction started on the plant in July 2002 with plans to build portions of the plant as the design progressed.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire is encouraged to see that DOE has a "comprehensive and focused grasp of the problem areas" and appreciates Chu's commitment to the state, according to a statement from her office.
"It is essential that the vit plant come on line safely to allow the Department of Energy to meet its cleanup obligations," the statement said.
Gregoire said in September that she was determined to see the vitrification plant on a stable path to treating waste before her last term ends in January.
The five scientific teams being formed to address technical issues will draw on the expertise of employees of DOE and its contractor, Bechtel National, and experts from industry, academia, DOE national laboratories and the DOE Office of Science.
The teams will address:
A decade into construction of the plant, technical issues still need to be addressed as DOE learns more about the complicated nature of the waste now held in underground tanks awaiting treatment, Huizenga said.
As waste has been retrieved from older tanks, more is learned about the waste, Holton said. For instance, DOE was aware of how much plutonium was in some tanks, but not the particular forms of plutonium until the last year, he said.
In addition some computer models, particularly for computational fluid dynamics, have not proved as capable as DOE had hoped, Huizenga said.
The second part of the new plan for the vitrification plant will focus on opportunities to speed up waste treatment or make it more efficient as the plant begins operating.
A separate team will look at options, such as getting more radioactive waste glassified, or vitrified, within each canister of high-level or low-activity waste produced at the plant.
The vitrification plant was not planned to be large enough to treat all the low-activity waste that will be separated out of the tank waste waiting to be treated, and the team will look at options for treating that waste. The plant as designed may be able to treat only one-third of the low-activity waste.
The team also will look at options to start parts of the plant early or to dispose of some waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a national repository in New Mexico, without treating it at the vitrification plant.
"Although there are challenges that remain, we have the right people working on the right issues and will make sure they have the expertise needed to resolve these issues," Chu said in the memo.Bechtel also announced Thursday that it would be bringing more corporate support to the vitrification plant project while technical teams address final technical issues.
Amos Avidan, senior vice president and manager of engineering and technology for Bechtel Corp., and Greg Ashley, principal vice president and president of Bechtel Nuclear Power, have been assigned to the technical teams.
SRS reducing costs, workers amid funding shortfall
Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle
November 8, 2012
Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle
November 8, 2012
Savannah River Site's management contractor briefed its 4,600 employees on Thursday about cost-cutting efforts spawned by a fiscal 2013 budget shortfall of $175 million.
In a video shared with workers, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions officials said the funding challenge is significant and has the greatest effect on environmental management projects, where the shortfall amounts to a 25 percent reduction that became apparent in September, just weeks before the 2013 budget year began Oct. 1.
Steps taken to reduce costs include eliminating 341 employees through voluntary separation and the release of about 440 staff augmentation and craft workers.
So far, the cost-cutting efforts have enabled the company to save about $70 million, said Jim Hanna, the senior vice president of corporate services.
"We're trying to do everything we can to be as efficient as we can," he said.
Employees were also briefed on a plan to operate only with essential personnel during the three holiday weeks, when most workers will be urged to use vacation time. Hanna said workers who stay home during the holiday weeks have enough leave time to ensure they will be paid.
"Based on the timing of this effort, we do not foresee anyone without enough vacation time to charge it to their time bank," he said.
A new stipulation requires workers to use all leave time earned during fiscal 2013 during the year, he said.
Until the budget issues can be resolved with the U.S. Department of Energy and its congressional funding sources, the priorities are first to meet regulatory commitments, then to ensure continued operations at H Canyon and retention of core competencies at the Savannah River National Laboratory, Hanna said.
Small reactor work at SRS put on hold
Mike Gellatly, Aiken Standard
November 7, 2012
The Department of Energy has put all work on small modular reactors at Savannah River Site on hold.
The much publicized initiative aimed to spearhead the development of this next generation of portable, refrigerator-sized reactors to SRS and the Savannah River National Lab.
SMRs are envisioned to be small enough to be pre-assembled in a factory and shipped to any location. They have been continually touted as one of the cornerstones of SRS' vision for the DOE facility's future - Enterprise SRS.
"DOE-SR has directed (Savannah River Nuclear Solutions) to suspend all activities on the small modular reactor initiatives for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2013 Continuing Resolution," James Guisti, acting director of DOE-SR external affairs, confirmed to the Aiken Standard on Tuesday.
Reports of the closing of government purse strings for the project began with an article in industry publication Weapons Complex Monitor on Friday.
"The White House Office of Management and Budget has directed the Department of Energy to stop funding work related to the potential siting of small modular reactors at the site, WC Monitor has learned," reporter Kenneth Fletcher wrote. "The change applies to DOE Office of Environmental Management funding being used for the work - the amount of which remains unclear - provided for the first half of this fiscal year through the Continuing Resolution funding most federal programs."
These easy-to-install reactors could potentially shave years and millions of dollars off the construction of nuclear power plants, and could make it economical to bring nuclear power to rural areas that lack infrastructure.
"We are evaluating what impact this will have on Enterprise SRS," Guisti said. "SMRs are only one initiative of our strategic vision for SRS and we have not abandon them while we explore other funding avenues."
President of SRNS Dr. David Moody described SRS as the "perfect place" to accelerate deployment of small modular reactor technology and to develop lead used nuclear fuel-cycle initiatives.
"Small modular reactor technology development is an excellent example of how we are capturing our nuclear knowledge for the future and leveraging the best-of-our-best to renew the true value of SRS for decades to come," Moody said last year.
Minnesota tribe: Time to be realistic about nuclear waste storage
Dan Haugen, Midwest Energy News
November 8, 2012
Minnesota's Prairie Island Indian Community says it's time for nuclear regulators to get real about the likely amount and duration of spent fuel storage at a dry-cask facility in the tribe's backyard.
An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hear arguments today in St. Paul over whether the tribe can intervene in re-licensing proceedings for Xcel Energy's Prairie Island nuclear waste storage facility in Red Wing, Minnesota.
"All we're saying is let's be realistic about this," said Phil Mahowald, the tribe's general counsel.
The 20-year-old Prairie Island facility was originally built and licensed as temporary storage until the federal government built a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
But with Yucca Mountain plans officially abandoned under the Obama administration, the Prairie Island Indian Community says regulators need to assume whatever storage they approve may exist on the site for centuries rather than decades.
The tribe's case is bolstered by a recent circuit court decision, which threw out a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rule that allowed it to make licensing decisions without considering the long-term impact of waste storage.
Waste confidence rule
Since 1984, nuclear regulators have relied on a federal Waste Confidence Rule, which said decisions on spent fuel storage could assume that waste would eventually be transferred to a permanent federal storage facility.
The rule blocked nuclear opponents from introducing arguments about long-term safety and environmental concerns in licensing hearings, but in June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the rule is flawed and insufficient.
The NRC has two years to re-write the Waste Confidence Rule, and until then it's suspended all decisions on nuclear reactor licenses and renewals. The commission wasn't explicit about whether that moratorium includes spent fuel storage decisions.
The court decision has given nuclear opponents an opportunity to introduce legal arguments that have been off-the-table for decades, and also raised the possibility that the NRC and utilities may need to produce longer-term environmental impact studies.
"You have to look at the impacts from cradle to grave, and you've just lost the grave part," said Diane Curran, a Washington, DC, attorney who has represented citizen groups and local governments in nuclear cases for more than three decades.
Scope of study disputed
Today, the Prairie Island Indian Community will ask an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to let it intervene in the Xcel spent fuel storage case, and to make arguments about the lack of study about long-term environmental impacts.
The tribe wants the NRC to postpone its decision on Prairie Island waste storage re-licensing until after the Waste Confidence Rule is replaced. The commission also supports this delay, though Xcel wants to proceed now.
The tribe also wants a broader environmental impact study, one that assumes the facility will double in size and stay in place for up to 200 to 300 years. Xcel is seeking renewal for 48 casks for 40 years, but it already has fuel on site to eventually fill 98 casks.
Xcel has already received permission from state regulators to expand to 64 casks at the site. The utility said in a statement that the impact of additional casks would be studied at the time they are proposed.
Where does it go?
The company's plans assume that a centralized storage facility will be available by 2025, that it will begin shipping waste away from its Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear sites beginning in 2027, and that all spent fuel will be removed by 2066.
"We greatly value our relationship with the Prairie Island Indian Community, and we have many common interests and concerns, particularly the interest in holding the federal government accountable for removing used nuclear fuel from the plant site," the company said.
The Prairie Island Indian Community wants Xcel Energy to slow its storage expansion by meeting more electricity demand through natural gas and energy efficiency, and it wants more focus on finding alternative storage sites.
Both the utility and tribe point to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, a government report released in January that recommends establishing regional repositories for spent nuclear fuel.
"We don't think a good temporary or long-term solution is 600 yards from the Prairie Island Indian Community and adjacent to the flood plain of the Mississippi River," Mahowald said. "There are better, safer places than Prairie Island."
Ultimately, though, there's "almost zero chance" that the NRC won't approve Xcel's license renewal request, said Dave Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Nuclear Safety Program. It might require upgrades or apply conditions, but its options are limited.
"Saying no doesn't really seem like an option," says Lochbaum, "because you can't wave a magic wand and make this waste disappear."
Y-12 using surplus cleanup funds to tackle mercury
Associated Press
November 7, 2012
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. --
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) The Department of Energy is directing millions in unused funds from several Y-12 cleanup projects to tackle the problem of toxic mercury around Oak Ridge.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports (http://bit.ly/T27VIe) the Oak Ridge plant used mercury in the construction of hydrogen bombs, and tons of the toxic metal have been discharged into the environment.
The focus of the cleanup is on reducing the amount of mercury getting into East Fork Poplar Creek, which has been posted as a health hazard since 1982.
Several projects are under way, including traps in the plant's storm sewer that already have removed about 24 pounds of mercury.
Also, environmental engineers are designing a new water-treatment facility that should reduce mercury to regulatory limits at the headwaters of the creek.
DOE IG Inspection Report, Allegations of Organizational Conflicts of Interest at Portsmouth and Oak Ridge
DOE IG Inspection Report
November 8, 2012
The integrity of the Federal acquisition process is protected, in part, by Organizational Conflicts of Interest (OCI) rules. These rules are designed to help the Government in identifying and addressing circumstances in which a Government contractor may be unable to render impartial assistance or advice. This report focuses on primary contractors and subcontractors at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Oak Ridge Reservation. In June 2011, the OIG Hotline received a complaint alleging that there was potential OCI involving contractors Restoration Services, Inc. (RSI) and VETCO, LLC-Technical Services Company (VETCO) at Portsmouth. The complainant further alleged that potential OCI also existed between contractors URS | CH2M Hill Oak Ridge, LLC, (UCOR) and RSI at Oak Ridge. We substantiated the allegation that OCI existed at Portsmouth and that potential OCI existed between contractors at Oak Ridge. Specifically, we confirmed that an OCI existed at Portsmouth involving a continuing financial interest between RSI and VETCO. We also confirmed that potential OCI at Oak Ridge existed between UCOR and RSI based on impaired objectivity concerning the review of work performed by RSI. We found that the actual and potential conflicts outlined in our report either had not been properly mitigated or identified by either the contractors or the federal officials involved. Management comments were generally responsive at both locations and concurred with the recommendations and took corrective actions to address the OCI issues by accepting mitigation plans submitted by the contractors.
LANL to Demolish Excavation Enclosures at Material Disposal Area B Near DP Road
Lab Manager Magazine
November 5, 2012
LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, November 1, 2012--Los Alamos National Laboratory is about to begin demolishing the metal enclosures used to cover the excavation and cleanup of a decades-old waste disposal site at the historic Technical Area 21.
Pre-demolition activities are beginning this week and the work should be completed by the end of March 2013. The project brings the Laboratory closer to transferring the six-acre tract of land to Los Alamos County.
The metal structures, which resemble airplane hangars, were installed in 2010 to protect workers and the public from exposure to hazardous and radiological contamination while excavating and packaging contaminated debris and soil from Material Disposal Area B, near DP road in Los Alamos.
"Removal of the structures marks the completion of a highly successful environmental cleanup project at Material Disposal Area B," said Ed Worth, federal project manager with the National Nuclear Security Administration's Los Alamos Site Office. "We look forward to the day we officially turn the property over for the benefit of our community."
After the structures have been demolished, the debris will be packaged in accordance with Department of Transportation requirements and shipped offsite to an approved waste disposal facility.
MDA B was used from 1944 to 1948 as a waste disposal site for Manhattan Project and Cold War-era research and production. The Laboratory received $212 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to perform environmental remediation work.
In addition to the work at MDA B, the Laboratory's Recovery Act projects included demolition of 24 old, unused buildings and the installation of 16 regional groundwater monitoring wells.
The waste disposal site at MDA B consisted of a series of narrow trenches up to 35 feet deep. During the excavation, the Laboratory removed about 47,000 cubic yards of contaminated debris and soil from the six-acre site. Though much of the waste excavated from the landfill was soil and run-of-the-mill trash such as cardboard and discarded protective clothing, the excavation also uncovered the remains of two 1940s pickup trucks. The excavated waste was packaged appropriately and transported to disposal facilities, and the trenches were backfilled with clean soil.
The safety of workers, the public, and the environment will be the top priority during the demolition and disposal of the structures.
"Workers will wear protective clothing and follow approved safety procedures throughout this project," said project manager Stephani Swickley. "To make sure we're protecting the public and our employees, we'll be conducting environmental monitoring of personnel as well as the air around the work zones and along DP Road."
Traffic in the area, including the intersection of DP Road and Trinity Drive, is not expected to increase substantially. However, large trucks and heavy equipment will be present in the area.
SRS forces some workers to take unpaid holiday time
Mike Gellatly, Aiken Standard
November 7, 2012
Mike Gellatly, Aiken Standard
November 7, 2012
Many employees of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions at the Savannah River Site are getting three nasty gifts of unpaid time off over the holiday season.
The Site's management and operations contractor confirmed Wednesday that the many SRNS employees will have to take paid vacation time or go unpaid for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years weeks.
As first reported by the Aiken Standard in September, SRNS will reduce staff to essential personnel only for the holiday weeks of 2012.
Reports of the closures were confirmed after a public report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board discussed plans and the amount of a funding shortfall SRNS are facing.
SRNS, which employs about 4,500 workers, is facing a fiscal year 2013 budget shortfall that could be as much as $175 million, according to DFNB Site Representatives M. T. Sautman and D. L. Burnfield.
"Facing FY13 budget shortfalls as high as $175 million and much smaller carryovers, SRNS announced they will be dramatically reducing staff augmentation support and construction forces very soon," Sautman and Burnfield reported. "These actions will likely strain some organizations (e.g., emergency planning, procedure writing) that are facing a significant loss of key personnel or staff augmentation."
SRNS and DOE have indicated their priorities include keeping H-Canyon operating (albeit at a slower pace), funding some 235-F risk reduction activities and SRS Enterprise initiatives, subsequent reports have said.
It is thought that the training department could suffer significantly. DNFB members met with the training manager and noted the department would "suffer significantly," losing 20 percent of its staff.
"These actions include dramatically reducing staff augmentation support and voluntary separations for SRNS staff," Sautman and Burnfield's report reads. "While some of these positions may be filled by experienced operations personnel, they will likely have little training experience."
SRS construction workforce reaches safety milestone
Mike Gellatly, Aiken Standard
November 5, 2012
The construction workforce for Savannah River Site's liquid waste program has reached a milestone, as they surpassed 25 million hours without an injury or illness resulting in a missed day of work.
The last missed day of work for construction employees of former SRS contractor Washington Savannah River Company and current liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation was recorded in June 1998. Both contractors have shared the same recording process for liquid waste operations at the Site and, consequently, SRR has continued to build on these hours to hit the 25 million hours mark.
That string of hours represents more than 14 years of work without a days-away case. The average construction organization would have 187 days-away cases in a span of 25 million hours.
Dave Olson, SRR president and project manager, congratulated SRR construction for their accomplishment and noted all work at SRS begins and ends with safety.
"This accomplishment represents one of many legacy SRS safety milestones that have been jointly celebrated by the current SRR construction workforce and the Augusta Construction Building Trades," Olson said. "SRR's construction employees are continuing an impressive record of work without a days-away injury. I am pleased to see them continue to keep the focus on what's most important in their daily job performance."
The construction work includes the closure of liquid waste tanks 18 and 19, multiple upgrades at the Saltstone plant and the Defense Waste Processing Facility's technology enhancements, including melter bubbler technology.
"By any comparison, this is world-class safety performance and a rare construction industry achievement that exemplifies our unrelenting commitment to the highest standards of workplace safety," said Kim Cassara, SRR manager of project design and construction.
SRR construction employees are the specific workgroup involved in construction activities in the liquid waste operations.
Feds ask for extension on waste cleanup at INL
Associated Press
November 7, 2012
The U.S. Department of Energy has asked Idaho officials for an extension of one year on deadlines involving cleanup of high-level radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho.
The Post Register reports ( http://bit.ly/UwPiLx) in a story published Wednesday that the federal agency failed to meet a September deadline to begin treating the waste at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, and it will also miss a Dec. 31 deadline to submit a schedule for processing the waste.
The 900,000 gallons of waste came from processing spent nuclear fuel from U.S. Navy ships. Plans call for converting the waste into a solid form and removing it from the INL. Currently it's stored in tanks at the INL's Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center.
"We've had technical issues" with the treatment of this waste, DOE spokesman Brad Bugger said. "We will eventually complete these milestones."
Officials said the delay was caused because nonradioactive material clogged a filter at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit.
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality is taking public comments on the request for the extension.
"We recognize that this is a mixed-waste radioactive unit, it's challenging to complete the process," said Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Brian Monson.
Missing the deadlines means the state could start imposing fines of $10,000 a day, though Monson said no decision has been made on that.
"We're very hopeful that the facility is going to get up and running," Monson said. "That's what everybody is looking for."
Because the extension request is for a year or more, it automatically triggered the public comment period in Idaho.
"We remain optimistic that the extension will be granted," Bugger said.
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ECA Board
Election Notice
ECA Executive Committee elections will be held on December 12, 2012.
If you would like to nominate someone or if you are interested in running for a position, please contact Bob Thompson (BThompson@ci.richland.wa.us), Amy Fitzgerald (AFitzgerald@cortn.org), or Pam Brown-Larsen (PBrown@ci.richland.wa.us).
Current ECA Board Nominations
Chair: Mayor Tom Beehan, Oak Ridge
Vice Chair: Council Member Chuck Smith, Aiken County
Secretary: Nominee needed
Treasurer: County Councilor Fran Berting, Los Alamos |