Acting Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management James Owendoff said Wednesday not to expect any big formal “list” of objectives to be published from his recently completed 45-day review of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office.
There has been much buzz about the 45-day review since Owendoff was named to head DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). On Wednesday, Owendoff said DOE would not publish a formal list of recommendations derived from the effort, which he began in June with a focus on prompt decision-making at EM.
“There is not a list out there per se,” Owendoff told the audience at the department’s National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va. Releasing any list externally would cause people to fixate on the that, Owendoff said after his presentation. Instead, the emphasis should be on the decisions being implemented within DOE EM.
The 45-day review is designed to help the office better focus on key actions and decisions in the near term. “Let’s look at those key decisions out there,” Owendoff said.
For example, “Should we be grouting the tanks at Hanford like we do at Savannah River,” Owendoff said, referring to DOE’s use of a cement-like engineered material to close waste storage tanks at its facility in South Carolina. The Hanford Site in Washington state is home to dozens of underground tanks that will eventually be emptied of waste.
The acting EM-1 said he didn’t know if that’s something that should be done, but it is a decision “that we’ve got to get teed up,” Owendoff said.
The review was initiated, Owendoff said, after he was asked “What are you going to do in the first 45 days on the job?” Owendoff said his initial reaction was “I don’t even get a year!”
The issues addressed by the 45-day review were not new because they came largely from the site managers, Owendoff said.