WC Monitor
3/07/2014
IN DOE
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has launched a new interactive timeline tracing the history of DOE’s cleanup efforts. The timeline, available on the EM website, stretches from the beginning of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s to the closure of underground waste tanks at the Savannah River Site last year. “Our Internet-savvy timeline is another example of EM’s efforts to communicate the importance of the Cold War cleanup to the public and demonstrate the EM program’s value to taxpayers,” EM Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Planning and Budget Teresa Tyborowski said in a release issued this week. “In addition, EM’s many accomplishments laid out in this timeline attest to our program’s deep knowledge and experience in nuclear cleanup.”
IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Three new members have joined the Board of the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority after being appointed by the U.K Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the NDA announced this week. Ken McCallum, previously the NDA’s Shareholder Executive’s Director, has been appointed as a non-executive director. Peter Lutwyche, the new Sellafield Programme Director, has been appointed to the Board as an executive director. And NDA’s Strategy and Technology Director, Adrian Simper, has been appointed as an executive director.
IN THE INDUSTRY
Former Department of Energy official Mark Frei was awarded this week Waste Management Symposia’s 2014 Wendell Weart lifetime achievement award. Frei, now a consultant for Longenecker & Associates, noted at the conference that he worked with Weart in preparing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for receipt of waste, and said its mission should be expanded. “I urge my former colleagues in DOE, and Congress, to boldly move out and take the necessary steps within Congress, and with regulators and stakeholders, to have WIPP safely dispose of other nuclear energy by-products in a timely fashion,” Frei said in prepared remarks. “And despite the recent contamination event, we have WIPP as a national treasure; let’s get on with it.”
Strata-G last week won a new task order from the Department of Energy to collect data and perform characterization at Outfall 200, where a mercury water treatment facility is planned at Oak Ridge’s Y-12 National Security Complex. The company will gather data about the site of the proposed plant and deliver a sampling and analysis plan to DOE by July. “These documents will help DOE’s EM program determine the number and location of samples and the appropriate removal and disposal actions when cleanup activities begin,” according to a DOE release. “Additionally, the contractor will develop a plan to determine the geotechnical properties of the area to aid the design of the mercury water treatment facility. DOE will use this data on soil types and the depth of bedrock to develop the final design for the structure.” It marks the first task order awarded under a five-year, $15 million contract awarded to three small businesses for Oak Ridge characterization work.
