Staff Reports
WC Monitor
9/18/2015
A renewed emphasis is being placed on technology development for Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management projects, Monica Regalbuto said during her first visit to Hanford after being confirmed as the new assistant DOE secretary for environmental management.
The projects have reaped benefits from significant past investments in technology development, she said. But development decreased as the office had shovel-ready projects to advance, she said. With 50 years of cleanup remaining and the most difficult work still to accomplish, it’s time to consider how investments in technology development can be used to reduce EM project life-cycle costs, according to Regalbuto. The goal is both to use technology to work through jobs more quickly and efficiently and also to build interest in cleanup work among the next generation of federal and contractor workers, both at cleanup sites and in the national laboratories, she said. It’s a chance to show them the important mission of environmental management at DOE and get them excited about participating in the work, the official added.
The Office of Environmental Management has joined the National Robotics Initiative led by the White House. When the initiative was started in 2011, one of its goals was to help astronauts in dangerous and expensive missions. “It’s a multiagency effort, but we all have similar issues,” Regalbuto said. For example, astronauts wear heavy suits and must have a supply of air to breathe, not unlike Hanford tank farm workers on supplied air respirators, she said.
The initiative has created a significant amount of interest in the robotics community in expanding its work to perform more environmental cleanup, she said. Specialists who recently visited Hanford “were like kids in a candy store,” Regalbuto said. “Our main goal is to improve safety, improve safety of the worker, but also to improve safety of facilities,” she said. There also are opportunities in technology development to improve technetium management and address issues with highly mobile cesium and strontium throughout the environmental management complex, according to Regalbuto.
Regalbuto is familiar with Hanford after supporting tank waste projects early in her career. Her first visit to Hanford was as a graduate student in 1989. Three years ago she spent several days at Hanford as part of then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s handpicked team looking at technical issues at the Waste Treatment Plant. Given her familiarity with Hanford’s vitrification plant and tank farms, most of her recent visit to Hanford was devoted to projects under the Richland Operations Office, which oversees the river corridor and central plateau cleanup. “What surprised me the most is what I did not see,” she said. “If I don’t see something, it is a very good thing. That means a lot of progress and a lot of people’s efforts.” Most striking was the 300 Area, where 209 structures have been demolished.
The only building remaining there that is planned to be demolished during river corridor cleanup is the 324 Building, which sits over a spill of cesium and strontium. The spill increases the cost of cleanup and demolition of the building and soil underneath. While the project remains a priority, proceeding with work depends on having adequate funding, she said. In the meantime, the building above the spill helps prevent precipitation from reaching the material and spreading the high-level radioactive contamination, she said. A plan has been developed to dig up the soil through the floor of the hot cell where the spill occurred and spread into the soil. Remotely operated heavy equipment mounted within the building will be used, and a mockup has been built off Hanford to test the methodology. Until the work is funded, Hanford workers are doing a good job of monitoring the spill to make sure it does not migrate, Regalbuto said.
Much progress has been made in the Hanford river corridor, but much cleanup remains to be completed both in the river corridor and the central plateau of Hanford, Regalbuto said. In the river corridor, in addition to the 324 Building, the 618-10 and d 618-11 Burial Grounds, as well as the 100-K Area, still must be addressed. The long-term plan has been to spend more money on central Hanford cleanup work assigned to the Richland Operations Office as land near the river is remediated. “We have not solved all the Richland Operations Office issues,” Regalbuto said. With DOE likely facing new legal requirements for cleanup of Office of River Protection projects as new consent decree deadlines are discussed in federal court, Regalbuto said she does not expect money from one Hanford DOE office to be shifted to the other. “They are two different independent missions, both critically important to us,” she said.
