PHOENIX – The increased interest in using Department of Energy nuclear sites for new power generation does not mean the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) is putting cleanup on the backburner, EM officials said here Monday.
Dutch Conrad of Mid-America Conversion Services kicked off the afternoon session by asking how Environmental Management can reassure stakeholders that cleanup is not taking a back seat. Earlier in the Waste Management Symposia, Tim Walsh, the head of Environmental Management, said the office would soon change its name.
“I’m the cleanup guy,” DOE Hanford Field Office Site manager Ray Geimer said during an afternoon session at the Waste Management Symposia. Nuclear cleanup remains job No. 1 at Hanford, Geimer said.
Other Environmental Management site managers offered similar assurances.
The public should be pointed to many old contaminated facilities that have been taken down, said Erik Olds, DOE’s manager of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and acting head of the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office.
There is no longer a contaminated old gasification diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, while the Portsmouth Site in Ohio has taken down the X-333 process plant, Olds said.
Environmental Management can assure public confidence in cleanup by delivering results, said Edwin DeShong, EM’s field office manager at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Savannah River has already added solar energy projects and is working on nuclear power and data centers. Most of the land at the 310-square mile site is still available for development, he said.
Various site managers also said that Walsh is pushing Environmental Management to get many top cleanup projects done by 2040.
Article corrected for spelling errors on March 10.