A small cadre of Energy Department Environmental Management personnel based at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Nevada Field Office may soon get their own private office space to insulate them from NNSA personnel at the former nuclear weapons-testing site, according to an internal DOE document.
Weapons Complex Monitor obtained a copy of the undated, unsigned draft memo, titled “Management Protocol Agreement between Office of Environmental Management (EM) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the Management of EM Resources at the Nevada Field Office (NFO).”
The draft protocol would replace a 2007 agreement for management of EM personnel in Nevada, Monica Regalbuto, DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management, said in a staff memo.
Once signed by senior Environmental Management and NNSA officials, the agreement would provide EM federal personnel — and employees of the site’s Environmental Management-funded environmental services contractor, Navarro — their own “segregated” office space, the document says.
The memo also seeks to make clear that the EM office’s budget will be used only for environmental cleanup needs at the site. “EM-funded federal and [environmental services] contractor resources will be used to support EM mission work” at the commingled site, the document says. “Resource sharing” will be done only “on a case-by- case basis to support shared mission needs,” according to the draft agreement.
Similarly, the EM office in Washington will control all “communications, public affairs and intergovernmental/community activities” related to legacy cleanup at the Nevada National Security Site.
There are just under 20 EM employees at the Nevada Field Office. The site’s legacy nuclear cleanup work, mostly soil and groundwater remediation from above-ground nuclear tests during the Cold War, has an annual Environmental-Management-funded budget of just over $60 million.
On the other hand, the site’s NNSA-funded prime contract, held by the Northrop Grumman-led National Security Technologies, is worth about $500 million a year. The deal was to expire this year, but will be extended following the implosion this summer of the NNSA’s follow-on procurement.
The memo specifies that any change to its protocols outlined must be approved both EM and the NNSA.
The NNSA is a quasi-independent DOE entity that handles the agency’s nuclear-weapons work for the Pentagon.
There is no Environmental Management field office, per se, in Nevada, though DOE has discussed the idea internally.
There is some precedent for conjuring an Environmental Management field office at an NNSA-managed site, but the last time DOE did so, it was in response to a catastrophic event.
The Office of Environmental Management set up its Los Alamos Field Office in 2015 after the 2014 underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. The leak was traced to a drum of Los Alamos transuranic waste that had been improperly packaged with a combustible mixture of nitrate salts and organic kitty litter.
The leak, which has kept the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant closed for nearly three years, prompted DOE to take legacy nuclear cleanup work out of the hands of Los Alamos National Security, the NNSA’s prime management and operations contractor at the lab, and seek an EM-funded cleanup prime. Competition for 10 years’ worth of work began in September.
