Labor contract at Y-12 extended again
With union contract negotiations apparently still unresolved at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant, the start of contract talks at Y-12 has once again been postponed so that Consolidated Nuclear Security – the government’s managing contractor at both production sites – can focus its attention at the Texas plant. Steve Jones, president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council in Oak Ridge, confirmed Wednesday that union representatives have agreed on another short-term extension of the collective bargaining agreement at Y-12 while waiting on CNS to begin talks on a long-term contract.
With the one-month extension, the Y-12 contract will now expire on Sept. 21. Given the new deadline, Jones said union officials in Oak Ridge would like to begin contract talks with CNS in mid-July or no later than early August. CNS has been in overtime negotiations with the Metal Trades Council at Pantex since February, and there has been no official comment in recent weeks from either the unions or CNS on the status of those talks. The Metal Trades Council represents about 1,100 hourly workers at Pantex, the main assembly/disassembly plant for nuclear warheads.
Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of the date CNS took responsibility for managing Y-12 and Pantex under a combined contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration.
NNSA and Contractors Carry Out Revised Strategy for UPF
The National Nuclear Security Administration and its Oak Ridge contractors are carrying out a revised strategy for the Uranium Processing Facility, shifting from a single consolidated production facility to house for all of Y-12 processing work with bomb-grade uranium to a smaller, three-building complex. The strategy also includes greater and longer use of existing facilities. But it appears that one thing that remains the same will be the use of alternative and developing technologies for processing the enriched uranium to help get out of the World War II-era 9212 uranium complex as soon as possible. The NNSA, however, has not released many details of the priority work over the past couple of years as the transition takes place.
One of the confirmed technologies in development is “electro-refining,” a method for purifying the uranium during the recycling operations – traditionally performed at 9212. The work on electro-refining or ER was noted as early as 2012 in reports by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which said there were plans to have the ER project up and running in Building 9215 – another production facility at Y-12 near 9212 – by the end of 2016.
But that was a few years ago, and the UPF strategy has changed since then and it’s not obvious whether NNSA is continuing the same technology plans. Indeed, some of the technologies previously planned for use in the one-site UPF have apparently been dropped or demoted to a lower priority. More recent reports have suggested the Electro-Refining capability may be available around 2019. NNSA in recent weeks has declined to discuss the electro-refining work or saying if it’s being carried out in 9215. “We cannot confirm the location of ER until the conclusion of the review of alternatives (in Critical Decision-1, due this summer),” agency spokesman Steven Wyatt said.
Wyatt said the Electro-refining project was approved for Critical Decision-0 (mission need) in September 2014. “The next phase of the project CD-1 (approval of alternative selection and cost range) is anticipated to be achieved this summer following an analysis of alternatives,” he said. He said the cost and other details – such as the timetable for development – won’t become available until Critical Decision-2 (approval of performance baseline) is accomplished, Wyatt said. That should occur in the FY2016-17 timeframe, he said.
Federal Funding for Historic Preservation Activities at K-25 Could Disappear
The Department of Energy acknowledges that federal funding for historic preservation activities at K-25 could disappear, based on the Obama administration’s proposed funding for FY 2016 that zeroed out the money for the project. However, the Office of Environmental Management emphasized that significant progress has been made this year toward the eventual goal. About $2.1 million is being spent this year as part of the supplemental agreement to carry out the historical project after DOE basically refused to save a part of the K-25 Building – as originally promised – because the building had become too deteriorated to guarantee the safety of cleanup workers.
DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, which was central to those earlier negotiations, said there has been some significant progress on the commitments made in the memorandum of agreement with preservation groups, etc. “In August, the virtual museum for the K-25 Building will be publicly available online,” Ben Williams, a DOE spokesman, said via email.
“The draft version received positive and encouraging comments this summer from the consulting and signatory parties, and we are excited to offer this educational tool to the public. The virtual museum includes in-depth narrative about the facility’s history and operations, a 3-D tour of the massive building, and interviews with former workers.”
Williams said DOE expects to receive a preliminary design for the site from the hired design team by early fall. After that, the consulting parties on the Oak Ridge project will complete “their review of the preliminary design for the history center, equipment building, and K-25 footprint interpretation,” Williams said. As regards the FY 2016 funding, the DOE spokesman acknowledged there may not be the money available to do the work that carries out the Memorandum of Agreement. “Therefore, we will not begin work on the final design of the new facilities until funding becomes available,” Williams said.
White Oak Lake Decision Could Take Longer than Expected
It appears that the decision on how to clean up White Oak Lake – a long-standing symbol of Oak Ridge pollution – could take even longer than expected. The 25-acre lake, which was created during the wartime Manhattan Project to catch the radioactive discharges from Clinton Laboratories (which became Oak Ridge National Laboratory), has always been considered one of the last cleanup tasks on the Oak Ridge agenda. That’s because it’s been a safety net for any leaching contamination that otherwise would go to the Clinch River and reservoirs downstream from the Department of Energy’s operations.
But the cleanup timetable in Oak Ridge keeps getting pushed further into the future, and that may be the case, in particular, with White Oak Lake. Chris Thompson, the deputy director of remediation who oversees the Oak Ridge activities for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, noted – in response to questions – that the current Federal Facility Agreement, Appendix J, has a schedule for a final Record of Decision on Melton Valley in 2036. That would include the final decision on what to do with White Oak Lake, and she said DOE is expected to provide a range of alternatives.
However, Thompson also said, “New DOE budget projections indicate that the decision may be delayed until 2048.” That would be beyond the date – 2046 – that’s most recently been considered the deadline for completing all of the Oak Ridge cleanup work. The range of alternatives is expected to include a plan to drain, dredge and close the White Oak Lake for good, returning the local environment to what it was before the WWII Manhattan Project and all that’s taken place since then.
In 1983, when U.S. Rep. Al Gore Jr., co-hosted a congressional field hearing in Oak Ridge to discuss the budding accounts of environmental disasters at the Department of Energy complex, an expert dubbed White Oak Lake the nation’s most radioactively polluted body of water. The construction of White Oak Dam between 1941 and 1943 backed up White Oak Creek and later served as a settling basin for hazardous releases at the operations.
Ultimately, the radioactive materials collected in the lake sediments. The lake has now been in place for seven decades. Capping projects in ORNL’s old nuclear burial grounds have largely stemmed the seeps and leakage from the wastes, and over the decades the amount of radioactivity in White Oak Lake has declined dramatically – because of the decay of cesium-137 and other nuclear byproducts.
The lake once had thousands of curies of radionuclides, but that may be as few as a few hundred now, according to some projections. Dredging and draining the big area would still be an enormous, and it’s not clear if DOE would willingly invest the big money to do that job. Regulators in years past have indicated DOE would ultimately have to close the lake for good, but that could become a matter of negotiations.
“The state is correct,” Mike Koentop, executive officer of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in Oak Ridge, said. “The current FFA ha a schedule for a final Record of Decision for Melton Valley in 2036. That includes the final decision for White Oak Lake.” Koentop said DOE is committed to “presenting alternatives to remediate White Oak Lake, including drainage and closure,” and he said that will be evaluated through the Federal Facilities Agreement and the CERCLA process.
He would not discuss budget projections and the possibility of the decision getting pushed into the future. He said DOE looks at lots of budget scenarios and they are subject to change. “We want to stick to what the FFA says right now,” Koentop said.
