As Tim Walsh, the new Department of Energy assistant secretary for Environmental Management, settles into his office, he will find a letter from a federal watchdog about old equipment and ongoing safety concerns within the DOE nuclear complex.
Walsh was sworn in to head the $8-billion nuclear cleanup office on Thursday Oct. 23 after being confirmed by the Senate weeks earlier.
As is its custom, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) wrote a welcome letter, Oct. 15, to the new Senate-confirmed head of Environmental Management, a position known in DOE circles as EM-1.
“We look forward to a positive and productive working relationship with you and your team to further our shared commitment to the safe execution of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) legacy radioactive waste cleanup and nuclear material management mission,” DNFSB said.
In the letter, DNFSB’s recently-departed acting chair, Thomas Summers, gave Walsh a brief summary of the board’s ongoing safety recommendations and concerns for sites for the DOE nuclear cleanup office. Patricia Lee is now the lone member of the DNFSB, which is supposed to be a five-member panel.
“DOE’s defense nuclear complex developed over an 80-year period, and many of the key facilities supporting the nation’s nuclear security enterprise are more than four decades old,” according to the DNFSB letter. As a result, the old bones, such as an old underground hoist at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, must be treated with care until replaced.
Speaking of WIPP, the board said improving the safety of transuranic waste disposal continues to be a priority. “DOE has experienced two significant safety events—one in 2014 at WIPP and another in 2018 at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL)—in which waste drums experienced energetic chemical reactions resulting in the release of radiological materia,” DNFSB said.
A year ago, DOE accepted DNFSB’s recommendation for improving policy for transportation of radioactive material at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and elsewhere, the board said in the letter. DOE submitted its implementation plan in August for improving waste transportation documents for eight sites.