Risk reduction activities at Savannah River’s 235-F facility would be largely put on hold in Fiscal Year 2016 under the Department of Energy’s budget request, DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody told WC Monitor yesterday. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board urged action at the former plutonium processing facility in a 2012 recommendation, and DOE has since launched implementation of a risk reduction plan. “At the present time, we have communicated to the Defense Board that at the president’s level the 235-F risk reduction activities will be put on hold until fiscal ’17,” Moody said. “Hopefully fiscal ’17 will be more conducive to initiating the inventory work at 235-F.”
SRS risk management operations are set at $387 million overall in DOE’s FY 2016 budget request, compared to an enacted level of $398 million. The 235-F activities are fully funded in FY 2015 and DOE is making “substantial progress” there, Moody said. “We are fully funded in Fiscal ’15 on 235-F risk reduction activities. We will continue those. We are isolating some of the electrical equipment and we have removed as much of the combustible material as we can,” he said. “The element of the process that we are not implementing in ’16 at the president’s budget level is starting removal activities of the cells in ’16.”
Jobs