Whether it’s law enforcement, water lines, or hiring practices, the Energy Department and its cleanup contractors are intertwined with their host communities in many ways. This was the overriding theme from last Thursday’s Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Manager Mark Watson once received a permit request to set up a landing strip for model airplanes. However, Watson informed the applicant the site would be located too close to the Y-12 National Security Complex, the National Nuclear Security Administration facility at Oak Ridge.
Typically, such a request comes across the city manager’s desk. It is handled locally and “doesn’t reach the folks inside the fence” at the Oak Ridge Reservation and Y-12, Watson said.
The small city of 27,000 and the DOE site deal with each other on dozens of issues, Watson said, such as potential radio communication between local police and Oak Ridge Site security. Likewise, when DOE launches a major facility construction inside the fence, it will connect with the city’s old, leak-prone water system. “You’re going to have the most advanced nuclear processing facility in the world hooked to a 75-year-old soda straw,” Watson said.
The Energy Department, its contractors, and the host communities also must also cooperate to attract young workers into the nuclear cleanup field, said Rick McLeod, president and CEO of the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization. The group works on nuclear issues within a five-county area in Georgia and South Carolina near the DOE facility.
With Southern Co. building two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle complex in Waynesboro, Ga., SRS and its contractors have significant competition for nuclear workers in the region, McLeod noted. Local job applicants want a clearer idea of how to seek employment inside the fence, the two speakers said.
