PHOENIX – Expediting nuclear cleanup and making it less expensive is vital to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, a senior adviser to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said here Monday.
Current projections indicate the Hanford Site in Washington state, which once produced plutonium for the government, won’t be fully cleaned up until somewhere between 2078 and 2091, Roger Jarrell said here at the Waste Management Symposia. Jarrell, senior adviser for Environmental Management, said the price could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
That is evidence the nuclear cleanup organization needs to be “leaner” and reap cost savings wherever it can, Jarreell said. Jarrell was appointed as senior adviser to DOE on Jan. 20 right after President Donald Trump started his second term.
When asked about recent retirements and buyouts affecting the Office of Environmental Management, Jarrell said he was still reviewing the office’s workforce situation.
Jarrell, a former general counsel at United Cleanup Oak Ridge, also served as a special adviser for Environmental Management during the first Trump term.
