The prime environmental contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina expects the Salt Waste Processing Facility to treat roughly six million gallons of waste during fiscal 2024, after doing more than 4 million in fiscal 2023.
That was the assessment BWX Technologies-led Savannah River Mission Completion President Dave Olson provided the South Carolina Nuclear Advisory Council Thursday at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. That’s part of the slow-but-steady progress toward the “drive to nine,” meaning 9 million gallons of salt waste treated annually at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). Introduction of the Next Generation Solvent at the facility, planned in fiscal 2024, should go a long way toward improving the processing rate, the contractor has said.
When Parsons, the builder of the plant, completed hot commissioning of plant in January 2021, DOE figured it would process up to six million gallons during the first year. But due to various glitches, the plant has not been available as much as DOE needs to reach the highest rates.
A half-dozen new electric vehicle charging stations have been installed at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky, the agency said this week.
Paducah Site Infrastructure Support Services Contractor Swift & Staley set up two dual-port stations at three locations, for a total of 12 charging ports at the site, DOE said in a press release, adding that more are planned in the future. One charging station can include multiple charging ports.
The former gaseous diffusion plant complex is also taking part in a federal program to replace gasoline-powered light-duty trucks with electric vehicles and the first ones arrived onsite in February, according to the release. The Paducah Site now buys 100% of its electricity from renewable wind and solar power sources through a program offered by Kentucky Utilities.
Billy Spencer, the longtime mayor of Piketon, Ohio, the village bordering the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site, is being challenged by a Piketon council member, several decades younger.
According to coverage in the News Watchman newspaper, Spencer is facing council member Isaac Dixon in the Nov. 7 election.
The article goes on to say Dixon is a 2014 graduate of Piketon High School who, after earning a bachelor’s degree from Wright State University, returned to his home town and was appointed to an open seat on council in 2022. Spencer who has been mayor since 2004, graduated from high school in 1974, and served as a Pike County deputy sheriff four years before going on to work 39 years at the Portsmouth Site.
