The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said Tuesday appointment letters have gone out to replacement members for a revamped Hanford Advisory Board (HAB) in Washington state.
Meanwhile, the chair of EM’s Site-Specific Advisory Board for the Nevada National Security Site said the local advisory panel has been told it will be disbanded or “sunsetted” at the end of fiscal 2027, which would be Sept. 30, 2027.
Those are among the takeaways from Tuesday’s online meeting of the EM Site-Specific Advisory Board chairs.
During the meeting, Nevada Advisory Board Chair Eddie Williams asked DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh for details on the plan to discontinue the Nevada panel. Walsh replied he plans to be in Las Vegas in a few weeks and could discuss it in person then. Williams also voiced concern about how locals can still provide input on the Nevada National Security Site after the advisory panel closes.
While Walsh and DOE speakers did not address the planned end of the Nevada advisory panel, a September document from the department said this sort of thing has happened before.
“Throughout the EM SSAB’s history, several local boards have been created and dissolved,” according to the recently-updated EM board operating procedures. “Reasons for the boards’ dissolution vary: the completion of the EM mission at the local board’s respective site, the local board’s fulfillment of its mission, or the diminished effectiveness of the local board.”
While Hanford’s board is not going away, it is basically being overhauled by DOE EM headquarters.
“You are probably going to look around and notice, Hanford is absent from the board today,” meeting moderator Eric Roberts said during the online session. Letters to the new members, who were selected by EM headquarters in Washington, D.C., went out last week, Roberts noted.
DOE’s Environmental Management office informed HAB in August that it wanted to “modernize” the Hanford board, reducing its headcount from 38-to-20 members and bringing its procedures more in line with the other seven advisory boards for the Cold War and Manhattan Project sites.
A spokesperson for the Washington state Department of Ecology, state regulator for Hanford, said in an email response to Exchange Monitor Tuesday the agency has not received any list of the new HAB members yet.
“The EM Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) was created to involve stakeholders more directly in EM cleanup decisions,” according to the board’s website. The local panels are charged with providing advice and recommendations on EM remediation decisions. In April the board chairs called for greater collaboration among the EM cleanup sites on issues related to reuse and recycling of various materials and equipment.
During his presentation, Walsh stressed reindustrialization of the nuclear cleanup sites as well as the upcoming issuance of something called the “Vision 2040” document that will discuss accelerating site remediation and economic development.
The next EM chairs meeting will be hosted by SRS in South Carolina during April 2027.
