Tuesday, June 9, 2020

EM Update June 9, 2020

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EM Update | Vol. 12, Issue 12 | June 9, 2020
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EM Senior Advisor William "Ike" White
“When I first came to EM almost exactly a year ago, I had heard about the cleanup challenges, but it’s safe to say that I didn’t expect it would be done in the middle of a pandemic environment,” White said. He thanked EFCOG and the contracting community for the role they have played in ensuring the workforce at EM sites adapts safely to the pandemic environment while continuing to make progress.
For instance, EM reached a path forward with the State of California to resume long-stalled cleanup at the Energy Technology Engineering Center site with demolition of 10 of the remaining DOE-owned buildings there. EM has also prepared a draft waste incidental to reprocessing evaluation for vitrified low activity waste at Hanford, and completed a real estate transfer agreement to help move forward with new disposal capability.
On acquisitions, White noted EM has awarded the new Hanford Tank Closure Contract. The program also continues to move forward with competing a new standalone management and operations contract for the Savannah River National Laboratory.
White also noted EM has issued the final request for proposals for a new Idaho Cleanup Project contract, while a draft request for proposals for the Savannah River Integrated Mission Completion Contract is also before potential job bidders.
“In terms of contracting, this was always going to be a busy year,” White said.
Most major EM sites have moved into early-phase restart activities, with remaining sites expected to follow suit soon, White said. As decisions are made about how, when, and where to ramp back up site operations, the top priority of senior DOE and EM leadership is the health and safety of all employees at EM sites.
With EM ramping back up, White noted the sense of collaboration and teamwork across DOE, the sites, and industry partners are as good as he’s ever seen, and he’s “never been prouder to be a part of the EM enterprise.”

EM Marks Accomplishments Across Complex During Essential Mission-Critical Period

EM made steady progress in its cleanup mission after most field sites moved into an essential mission-critical operating posture beginning in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Field sites across the DOE complex marked noteworthy accomplishments during this period of reduced operations, positioning the cleanup program for further success as the sites now work to restart activities and continue tackling an ambitious set of priorities, many of which remain on track to be completed this year.
"I attribute our success during the period of essential mission-critical activities to our dedicated federal and contractor employees who remain committed to our cleanup mission," EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Todd Shrader said. "I'm impressed by their accomplishments as they safely responded to the pandemic, and their achievements will only continue as we move to resume full operations across the complex."
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A small team of workers with EM Richland Operations Office contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company recently applied fixative to the soil at the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition site to ensure contamination is contained within the posted radiological boundaries. Crews must periodically reapply the product to maintain its effectiveness.
Hanford Site
At the Hanford Site, small teams of essential personnel continued mission-critical activities, including:
  • Spraying fixative over the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition site to ensure that contaminated soil was not exposed.
  • Cleaning and removing algae and sediment from drinking water treatment basins.
  • Removing and controlled burning of tumbleweeds to reduce potential fuel sources on the site in the event of a weather-related or accidental wildfire.
Those mission-critical operations were required to ensure protection of the Hanford workforce, the public, and the environment.
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Idaho National Laboratory Site crews position a shipping cask over the spent nuclear fuel storage vault at the Radioactive Scrap and Waste Facility before lowering the fuel into place.
Idaho National Laboratory Site
EM and cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho made progress on several mission-critical projects at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site involving the transfer of spent nuclear fuel, leak testing of a spent fuel storage facility, and waste shipments.
Crews completed the first of several spent nuclear fuel transfers from wet storage at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) to dry storage at the Radioactive Scrap and Waste Facility at the Materials and Fuels Complex.
Workers also moved spent nuclear fuel from the Advanced Test Reactor canal to dry storage at INTEC’s Chemical Processing Plant-603 facility. These transfers allowed the restart of the reactor for its next experiments.
Crews also assisted EM INL Site contractor SpectraTech in conducting a five-year leak test of the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, which is a Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirement. Leak checks were performed at all 29 storage vaults that contain fuel and debris from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The seals to each vault remain effective and no leaks were detected.
Shipping crews also completed 17 shipments of contact-handled transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and four shipments of low-level radioactive waste offsite in compliance with the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement.
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Frank Martinet, a maintenance superintendent in the Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos contact-handled transuranic waste program, takes a break from the Operational Excellence Initiative with his sons, Ethan, 11, at left, and Blake, 4, who he calls his assistants.
Los Alamos
Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, EM’s cleanup contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, established the Operational Excellence Initiative (OEI) to create a training program for employees unable to telework during the period of essential mission-critical activities.
OEI allowed about 180 employees — including radiological control technicians, craftsmen, waste operators, and nuclear facility operators — with the contact handled transuranic waste program at Technical Area 54’s Area G to pursue training and qualifications, helping them maintain the knowledge and skills necessary to support mission objectives.
Participants have completed more than 160 online training courses, required reading assignments, and live teleconference briefings delivered by subject-matter experts.
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Crews place soil in the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project’s Crescent Junction disposal cell.
Moab
In response to COVID-19, project management implemented an array of safety and precautionary procedures to protect staff while steady operations continued at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project toward the goal of removing a cumulative 11 million tons of contaminated soil and debris this year. Many workers at the Moab and Crescent Junction sites, such as heavy equipment operators and truck drivers, have traditionally worked independently, which made social distancing easier. Meetings and trainings are now structured differently, occurring over the phone, virtually, or with six feet of distance between employees. Wearing face coverings is encouraged while onsite, and stringent cleaning methods have been imposed.
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Navarro Environmental Scientist Lyle Davis conducts an inspection following rain that occurred in April 2020. Federal and contractor staff with the EM Nevada Program worked together to safely conduct regulatory-required activities during the program's mission-critical period.
Nevada Program
During its mission-critical period, the EM Nevada Program earned regulatory approval to transition the Rainier Mesa groundwater management area to long-term monitoring, an achievement completed three years early, saving approximately $5 million in federal funding.
The Nevada Program also advanced the transfer of long-term stewardship responsibilities for certain sites on the Nevada Test and Training Range to the DOE Office of Legacy Management, a process involving the transmission of more than 7,200 records.
The Nevada Program hosted several web-based events during the period, including the 2020 Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) Waste Generator WebShop, the NNSS Low Level Waste Stakeholders Forum, and a meeting of the Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board.
Navarro Research and Engineering, the environmental program services contractor for the Nevada Program, also delivered more than 175 meals to eight local emergency response agencies and two area charities.
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Part of Oak Ridge’s Liquid Low-Level Waste System pump replacement project involved removing the barometric protection tower pictured here.
Oak Ridge
At the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM), employees used virtual meetings, online sharing of photographs and drawings, remote site visits, and other methods to help complete work.
An engineering team with OREM cleanup contractor UCOR used remote tools to prepare to replace 30-year-old pumps critical to the Liquid Low-Level Waste System at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
The new pumps add capability to transfer both legacy and newly generated waste, and they will also restore backup pumping capabilities since one of the two existing pumps has failed.
The pumps transport material a mile through underground pipes to 50,000-gallon storage tanks. Replacing these pumps is difficult and requires extensive planning because they are housed in below-grade shielded concrete vaults.
While working remotely, engineers prepared mechanical and electrical engineering instructions so a portion of a 25-year-old complex sludge mixing system could be safely disconnected and removed from the top of a three-foot-thick concrete vault. They also designed a new electrical distribution system.
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Shortly before reduced operations began, demolition crews with Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth removed approximately 520 feet of high-pressure fire water lines from the perimeter of the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site. The removal makes way for a new water detention system to support building demolition.
Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office
Portsmouth Site
The Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) Project in southern Ohio finished a key step toward demolition of the first of three massive uranium enrichment process buildings at the site.
The X-326 High Assay Gaseous Diffusion Process Building was declared criticality incredible, which supports downgrade of the facility to a below Hazardous Category 3 nuclear facility, according to Tyfani Lanier, director of nuclear safety and engineering at Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth (FBP), the site's deactivation and decommissioning contractor.
Achieving the declaration involved the generation, review, and publication of more than 2,500 pages of detailed safety evaluations and data packages for the characterization of more than 400,000 pieces of process gas equipment.
“Downgrade approval was necessary to allow FBP to begin demolition of the X-326 process building and disposal of the associated debris in the On-Site Waste Disposal Facility,” Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) Federal Project Director Jud Lilly said. “Demolition of the X-326 building, with its 29-acre footprint, will make the first significant skyline change at the Portsmouth D&D project.”
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Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office’s Tracey Duncan works remotely on the Paducah Site Management Plan.
Paducah Site
At the Paducah Site, PPPO worked with state and federal regulators on processing 13 mission-critical environmental documents, including the fiscal 2020 Site Management Plan (SMP), which was approved on May 21.
An annual deliverable that outlines Paducah’s environmental cleanup strategic approach, the SMP sets forth enforceable regulatory milestones for the current year plus two additional years. It also outlines upcoming work for the C-400 city block remediation. The C-400 Complex is the primary source of groundwater contamination at the Paducah Site and one of PPPO’s highest priorities.
PPPO Environmental Protection Specialist Dave Dollins said his office was able to meet all of its deadlines while working remotely.
“This was the first time I have had to telework for an extended period of time and I was very pleased how our information technology infrastructure was able to support collaborative work,” Dollins said.
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A subcontractor for Mid-America Conversion Services works in an excavation for a water-main repair at EM’s Portsmouth Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Conversion facility. Despite challenges associated with limited operations, the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office safely completed the critical work in five days.
DUF6 Conversion Project
PPPO’s Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF6) Conversion Project advanced its engineering design activities that will allow large plant modifications to move forward on a compressed schedule once construction can resume.
At its Portsmouth facility, the project completed its plan for depleted uranium storage cylinders that require special handling. Operations and maintenance contractor Mid-America Conversion Services (MCS) developed work packages, engineering evaluations, and the design of special tooling to allow for more efficient sampling and processing.
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Operator Charlie Stokes uses a specialized cart to move material through a glovebox in a training mock-up at the Savannah River Site.
Savannah River Site
Savannah River Site (SRS) personnel accomplished significant work while in an essential mission-critical operating posture, including critical maintenance and surveillance activities necessary to ensure facilities continued to meet safety requirements and maintenance schedules.
While employees performed many activities via telework, key personnel continued to report to the site as needed, adhering to enhanced safety and social distancing protocols. Their accomplishments include:
  • Finishing dissolving Material Test Reactor and High Flux Isotope Reactor spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in H Canyon for the fiscal year, helping make room for L Basin to receive more SNF shipments from foreign and domestic research reactors. Dissolving fuel bundles in nitric acid in H Canyon is the first step in dispositioning the material. 
  • Continuing SNF receipts from foreign and domestic customers in L Area on schedule. SRS safely stores SNF in L Basin until it is ready for processing in H Canyon.
  • Double-stacking more than 60 canisters in the Defense Waste Processing Facility’s (DWPF) Glass Waste Storage Building 1. Modifying the existing storage positions in Glass Waste Storage Building 1 to store two canisters (each 10 feet tall and 2 feet in diameter) instead of one expands on-site interim storage from 4,602 storage positions to 6,864, postponing the cost of building another glass waste storage building to until at least 2029.
  • Preparing approximately 86,000 gallons of salt waste for processing through the Tank Closure Cesium Removal demonstration project.
  • Improving plutonium processing for more timely removal of plutonium from the state of South Carolina. Crews installed new material entry and removal devices for the glovebox used for processing; acquired new tools that allow for tight bag closure, minimizing waste generation; designed carts to move containers through the glovebox; and relocated equipment inside the glovebox to improve workflow.
  • Constructing a storage, characterization, and shipping facility in K Area for expedited plutonium shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The new facility increases storage capacity of down-blended material and eliminates the need to transfer the material to the site’s Solid Waste Management Facility prior to shipment from SRS, supporting reduced handling and process efficiency.
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Double stacking canisters of glassified high-level waste at the Savannah River Site — placing one canister on top of another in a single silo — extends the storage capacity for interim canister storage space until at least 2029. This work was among the site's achievements during its reduced operations.
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A conceptual drawing of Savannah River National Laboratory’s principal electrostatic precipitator air purification element.
Savannah River National Laboratory
Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) joined efforts by the DOE complex this spring to develop virus prevention, treatment, and modeling solutions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
SRNL has developed a prototype for an electrostatic precipitator (ESP) that can be coupled with breathing hoods and masks to remove viral and microbial contaminants from air with extremely high efficiency. This innovation is intended to reduce infection risk for healthcare professionals who work in high-risk spaces.
The ESP prototype is currently in testing, and efforts are being made to produce a more compact, scalable system. Testing is also under way to ensure the ESP system is consistent in deactivating the coronavirus after multiple uses, a critical quality step before it is released for potential manufacturing.
SRNL scientists and engineers are also assessing chemical and electromagnetic radiation solutions for N95 mask disinfection and decontamination. Further work and testing are required, and if successful, offer promising solutions to reduce the likelihood of exposure and contagion for medical care providers.
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A miner at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) installs a roof bolt 2,150 feet below the surface in the WIPP underground. WIPP is the nation's only repository for the permanent disposal of defense-generated transuranic waste.
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
As the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) operated in a reduced operating posture, the site continued to receive five shipments of transuranic waste per week from EM’s Idaho and Los Alamos sites, and workers completed one construction project while they ramped up another.
WIPP’s 3.3-mile bypass road opened in early May, carrying non-WIPP traffic away from the site, including a large construction zone where excavation has begun on the site’s fifth shaft, known as the utility shaft.
The shaft will reach 2,275 feet underground and provide increased air as part of the upcoming Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS). Crews recently poured concrete equipment pads and started excavating the first 62 feet of the shaft.
WIPP crews installed 1,189 bolts — a monthly record — in the roof and walls of the mine to help control movement of salt in the permanent waste repository.
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Workers Resume Demolition on Oak Ridge’s Centrifuge Complex

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Oak Ridge's Centrifuge Complex contains the largest collection of structures remaining at the East Tennessee Technology Park. Crews have taken down two facilities in the complex, and now they are working to take down the final two — K-1210, at left, and K-1220.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – Demolition has resumed on the Centrifuge Complex at Oak Ridge's East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) after an almost two-month pause in field work due to protective measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spanning 235,000 square feet and reaching 180 feet in height, the complex is the largest and tallest collection of structures remaining at ETTP. It was built in stages to develop, test, and demonstrate the capability of centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment. The last of these facilities ceased operation in the mid-1980s.
This project is part of a larger effort by the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its cleanup contractor UCOR to complete all demolitions and major site cleanup at ETTP by the end of this year — a goal known as Vision 2020. It will mark the first time in the world an entire uranium enrichment complex is removed.
“As one of the last major demolition projects at the site, nothing is more symbolic of how close we are to achieving our goal at ETTP than the removal of this complex,” OREM Manager Jay Mullis said. “I’m extremely proud of the countless hours of work and planning by our federal and contractor staff to enable workers to safely resume their work at this facility.”
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K-1220 stands 180 feet tall. It is too tall to be safely torn down with conventional heavy equipment, so it will be pulled down using giant winches.
UCOR is returning employees to the site in phases, with the demolition crews being among the first to resume cleanup based on the social distancing inherent in this type of work.
Crews are taking down the final two sections of the Centrifuge Complex. Those include the K-1210 Complex, which served as a pilot plant for testing feed, withdrawal, and depleted uranium hexafluoride transfer systems, and the K-1220 Complex, which was used primarily to test production centrifuges.
At 180 feet in height, K-1220 is too tall to be safely torn down with conventional heavy equipment. Instead, workers will pull down the facility using giant mechanical devices known as winches.
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Before Oak Ridge entered limited operations, workers were trained to operate giant winches to pull down K-1220.
The complex was comprised of four sections. Before work was paused due to COVID-19, workers brought down the K-1004-J laboratory section, an original Manhattan Project facility built for research and development. They also finished tearing down the second section, the K-1200 facility, known as the Advanced Machine Development Laboratory and Component Preparation Laboratory.
OREM and UCOR are working together to transform ETTP into a multi-use industrial park, national park, and conservation area for the community. That vision has already started to become a reality. OREM has transferred almost 1,300 acres at ETTP for economic development, with another 600 acres slated for transfer in the years ahead. OREM has also set aside more than 100 acres for historic preservation and placed more than 3,000 acres in conservation for community recreational use.
-Contributor: Wayne McKinney

New Application Significantly Reduces Prep Time for Waste Processing at SRS

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A new electronic application will significantly reduce the time needed to qualify waste batches to be fed to the Salt Waste Processing Facility when the facility, pictured here, comes online.
AIKEN, S.C. – EM has developed a new electronic application capable of reducing by up to 75 percent the time needed to qualify large quantities of radioactive liquid salt waste for decontamination processes.
The application is designed to ensure salt batches meet specific criteria for transfer to the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) when it comes online.
Savannah River Remediation (SRR), EM’s liquid waste contractor at SRS, has been qualifying salt waste batches for future processing. However, that work has been a four-to-six-month process for each batch, which includes creation of a report requiring numerous time-consuming calculations. The new application will be able to reduce the total batch qualification time to approximately one-and-a-half months.
Salt waste processing will significantly increase when SWPF starts up. SRR had been processing about 1 million gallons of salt waste per year with pilot technologies for SWPF. That number is expected to climb to between 6 and 9 million gallons per year when SWPF becomes operational.
Reducing the time needed for qualifying salt waste batches is critical to feeding waste to SWPF. The newly developed application performs those calculations electronically to determine if the waste being analyzed for qualification meets SWPF’s waste acceptance criteria. The application is named eWAC, referencing the acronym for waste acceptance criteria.
SRR Flowsheet and Integration Manager Ryan McNew said the application is another innovation to support SWPF.
“SRR staff will enter the waste batch’s sampling results into eWAC, which will evaluate those results and determine the acceptability of the material to feed to SWPF based on established criteria,” McNew said. “The software will produce a salt batch acceptance report for each set of data entered.”
That report will go to site officials for review and approval before the waste can be transferred.
DOE-Savannah River Assistant Manager for Waste Disposition Jim Folk said that qualification time will be critical to the overall decontamination process.
“When the SWPF begins radioactive operations, it is expected to process much greater quantities of salt waste, which means more batches will be prepared,” Folk said. “Shortening the total qualification time for each batch will help provide a more constant flow through the highly integrated processing system.”
The eWAC application has been tested for readiness and is fully operational. It is expected to be used to qualify the next salt batch that must be evaluated for feed to SWPF by March 2021.
-Contributor: Jim Beasley

Moab Site Partners With National Park to Recover Plants

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Transplanting vegetation from Canyonlands National Park to the Moab Site allowed EM to avoid costs on purchasing new plants. Pictured are Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project employees Jose Fernandez, left, and Jason Atwater. This photo was taken in early March prior to the implementation of social distancing guidelines.
MOAB, Utah – An EM partnership with Canyonlands National Park has blossomed.
This spring, the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project teamed with the National Park Service (NPS) to relocate native plants from the park to the Moab Site.
Canyonlands needed to make way for an upcoming construction project and didn’t want the plants to go to waste. The Moab UMTRA Project happens to cultivate native plants, such as perennial grasses, to revegetate areas of the site that aren’t covered by the uranium mill tailings pile.
A crew dug up about 100 mature grasses and shrubs from the park and planted them where there is a high potential for survival. The salvaged, drought-tolerant plants won’t require much water and they help create a more natural state. 
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Grasses from Canyonlands National Park are shown planted at the Moab Site.
“Restoring native vegetation in a disturbed desert ecosystem is a long and difficult task,” Moab UMTRA Project Environmental Technician Luke Mattson said. “By partnering with local ecological restoration professionals in the community, we are working together to share knowledge and resources to create a sustainable and resilient landscape.”
A resilient landscape includes making the Moab Site fauna-friendly.
“Bunchgrasses such as Indian ricegrass that we salvaged have large, nutritious seeds that are a critical food source for many wildlife species,” said Liz Ballenger, ecologist and vegetation program manager with the NPS.
-Contributors: Luke Mattson, Honora Thompson

EM Updates Cleanup ‘By the Numbers’

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The Oak Ridge Site's "By the Numbers" features facts and figures about cleanup and more, available here. 
EM has updated its popular “By the Numbers” feature, which illustrates cleanup progress at EM sites through quick and clear infographics.
Facts and figures on each major EM site, plus the Savannah River National Laboratory, can be found here. Each site page also features a key look forward to an anticipated achievement over the next decade, as described in more detail in “EM Vision 2020-2030: A Time of Transition and Transformation,” a report released earlier this year.
Some tidbits from the new “By the Numbers:”
  • 18 underground waste tanks have been emptied at the Hanford Site using multiple retrieval technologies, with more than 3 million gallons of waste retrieved.
  • More than 263,000 barrels of transuranic waste were super-compacted at the Idaho Site, eliminating the need for thousands of additional shipments to a permanent, offsite repository.
  • More than one-half of legacy cleanup has been completed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Site.
  • At the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, 42 extraction and freshwater injection wells protect surface water quality and recover ammonia, uranium, and other contaminations before they can be discharged into the Colorado River.
  • By 2028, the EM Nevada Program will transition the final Nevada National Security Site groundwater characterization area, Pahute Mesa, into long-term monitoring.
  • 500,000 cancer treatment doses will be generated annually from isotopes extracted from the uranium-233 inventory at the Oak Ridge Site.
  • 4.4 billion gallons of groundwater have been treated to remove contaminants using pump-and-treat technology at the Paducah Site, significantly reducing off-site groundwater contamination.
  • Ten buildings that comprise the former Radioactive Materials Handling Facility complex at the Energy Technology Engineering Center Site are scheduled for demolition following an agreement with the state of California.
  • More than 26 million pounds of excess materials diverted from landfills are a result of recycling at the Portsmouth Site. The materials w
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