ARLINGTON, VA — Coaxing new waste treatment facilities to run smoothly and tackling a variety of issues tied to a mature but graying workforce are among top challenges facing the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, agency execs said here Friday.
On the upside, Environmental Management (EM) is approaching yearly funding of almost $8 billion, its acting day-to-day boss, William (Ike) White has been running nuclear cleanup for three years and various major facilities are coming online at places like Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“We are transitioning to operations and that is a different mindset,” said Randy Hendrickson, senior adviser to Nicole Nelson-Jean in EM’S office of field operations. Hendrickson’s federal experience includes the Department of Defense and National Nuclear Security Administration.
In operations, you must guard against complacency, Hendrickson said. “You can’t think we’ve done this a thousand times; this is routine.” For example, airline pilots always go through a pre-flight checklist.
Dae Chung, EM’s head of corporate services, picked up on that point. Chung said he was happy to see the Salt Waste Processing Facility “is running but it is not running at its nameplate capacity yet.”
Several morning speakers, including Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) in a video message, pointed to potential glass-making from low-level tank waste at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant by the end of 2023.
Workforce issues are top of the priority list for Candice Robertson, Environmental Management’s second in command. Half of the cleanup office’s federal employees will be eligible to retire within five years. “Sadly, that does not include me,” she said.
Robertson also said there are only 15 EM employees who are currently aged 30 or younger. The cleanup office is actively recruiting younger prospects and increasing its minority outreach, she noted.
At the same time, Hendrickson said DOE should not hire under-30s just to improve its demographic profile. Other workforce issues are also important, Hendrickson said. “What are we doing about middle management, middle-layer supervisors?” He called this a key issue during a time of federal retirements.
Even so, Chung said attrition at Environmental Management has decreased over the past 10 months, compared with earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.
