PHOENIX— The Department of Energy’s $7.6 billion Office of Environmental Management is now responsible for only 15 cleanup sites, with the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York coming off the board.
Meanwhile, DOE Environmental Management planned to sign a new collaboration agreement with the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority later today (Monday) at the 2022 Waste Management Symposia. Those are a couple of key developments from day 1 of the gathering.
“Today we are down to 15 sites,” Environmental Management chief of staff Mike Nartker said during a panel discussion, formally removing Brookhaven from the remediation list. Brookhaven is done roughly a year after crews tore down the High Flux Beam Reactor exhaust stack.
Both William (Ike) White, the senior adviser and top day-to-day boss at Environmental Management and UK National Decommissioning Authority CEO David David Peattie, touted the new collaboration deal between the agencies during the kickoff session for the conference that is resuming in person this year after going virtual in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The last collaboration agreement on technical information and personnel exchange between the agencies was inked at the last in-person Waste Management Symposia in 2020.
The signing was expected around 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time during the conference with 2,200 attendees in person this year after going virtual in 2021. Conference organizers said that topped their hopes for bringing in 1,600 to 1,700 people.
During the morning, attendees also heard recorded messages from Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Kayla Barron, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut currently in the international space station.
