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News from Around the Complex
July 1 – July 15, 2008
July 13, 2008 Hot cells now processing transuranic waste for final disposal, The Oak Ridger OAK RIDGE , Tenn. —Remote-handled transuranic waste resulting from decades of research activities at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now being readied for safe, long-term storage out of state. Specially designed rooms called hot cells enable this environmental legacy to be safely sorted and packaged into containers with robotic arms, avoiding all human contact and supporting worker safety. The hot cells became ready to receive waste on May 22 following months of preparation by the Oak Ridge Office's Environmental Management Program.
July 12, 2008 Hanford vit plant gets emission stack, Tri-City Herald It's made of steel, weighs about 140,000 pounds and it took four months to assemble. And Friday the 68-foot-tall emission stack was set atop the Analytical Laboratory building at Hanford 's vitrification plant by 32 workers and engineers in an hour-long operation. The stack will help block the release of contaminants from the lab into the environment. "It's a significant milestone, a good symbol of our progress for the community to see," said David Leeth, plant construction manager. The $12.2 billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant Project, of which the lab is a key component, will help take care of the 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford . The lab will analyze radioactive waste samples before they're treated to identify the best recipe to convert the waste into molten glass, and will ensure quality control in the treatment process. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/237599.html
July 9, 2008 $13.75 million settlement: Fernald's uranium mess has high price: Pollution from weapons plant may stay in water 100 years, The Columbus Dispatch Radioactive waste left in the groundwater at the former Fernald uranium-processing plant in southwestern Ohio could linger for a century, state officials estimate. That's why the U.S. Department of Energy agreed yesterday to pay a record $13.75 million to settle a lawsuit that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency filed in 1986. The payment, the largest of its kind in state history, is considered one of the final acts of a years-long $4.4 billion cleanup at the plant, which refined raw uranium for nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1989. The site is now known as Fernald Preserve, a park area with wetlands, forests and prairies. Federal officials say the site will be safe for visitors when it opens this fall. The plant, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati , was notorious for contaminating the air, land and water with uranium waste and radon -- both radioactive elements linked to cancer in humans. The agency settled a class-action pollution lawsuit filed by the plant's neighbors for $78 million in 1989.
July 8, 2008 Domenici rejects Bush plea for WIPP cut, Carlsbad Current-Argus CARLSBAD — A U.S. Senate subcommittee has approved a $231.6 million budget for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. WIPP, a nuclear repository, is located approximately 27 miles east of Carlsbad . The Senate's budget, according to a news release from the office of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., rejects President Bush's budget recommendation to cut about 10 percent from WIPP's annual budget and instead calls for $231.6 million in funding. The $33.2 billion FY2009 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill will be considered by the full Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday. The Senate's budget was $20.1 million more than the executive branch's budget request, but was also $3 million below current funding levels. The House Energy and Water Committee has also agreed to provide roughly $20 million more than the amount requested by the Bush administration. http://www.currentargus.com/ci_9822274
July 8, 2008 EPA threatens to pull out of Field Lab study, Los Angeles Daily News Frustrated with a lack of transparency in the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab, the U.S. EPA has fired off a harsh letter to the Energy Department threatening to pull out of a long-awaited radiation study at the former nuclear research site. In a July 2 letter, EPA Site Cleanup Branch Chief Michael Montgomery warned that "recent events demonstrate a significant lack of transparency in DOE's interactions with EPA and the public." Montgomery also wrote that the Energy Department planned to use radiation standards that were far more lax than EPA guidelines. And he added that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had learned that Boeing - the owner of the lab - was going to be conducting some of the radiological sampling itself instead of hiring an independent, outside contractor as promised. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_9822378
July 7, 2008 Outlook unclear for ORNL program: No funds to continue radioisotope production for medicine, industry, Knoxville News-Sentinel OAK RIDGE - One of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's historically important missions - the production of radioisotopes for medicine and industry - is in turmoil. There currently is no money in the budget for the work, and the lab's supply of key isotopes is dwindling, particularly the californium-252. Neutron-emitting californium has broad uses in industry, ranging from well-logging equipment used in oil exploration to radiation scans that detect cracks and flaws in airplanes to sources that jump-start nuclear reactors. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/07/outlook-unclear-for-ornl-program/
July 6, 2008 Feds to investigate Livermore Lab's handling of toxic metal beryllium, Contra Costa Times Five incidents involving Livermore Lab's handling of the toxic metal beryllium have prompted two investigations. A team of outside experts audited beryllium work at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory last month and federal regulators are set to follow up with their own review in September. Some of the incidents involved workers being unknowingly exposed to beryllium dust, which if inhaled can lead to beryllium sensitivity and chronic beryllium disease, an incurable and potentially fatal lung condition. In one of the incidents, the lab failed for five months to notify 178 contract workers with GSE Construction of Livermore who were exposed to the metal during a four-year seismic retrofit of a machine shop that ended in December 2006. Typically, only a small percentage of people who are exposed to beryllium, a very strong, lightweight metal used in nuclear weapons work, will be diagnosed with sensitivity. But studies show that one-third to two-thirds of those who do will go on to develop chronic beryllium disease within five to 10 years of their diagnosis. http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/localnews/ci_9799196
July 3, 2008 $17.5M to support OR-based work: Funds are part of $62.5M Congress approved for science, Knoxville News-Sentinel OAK RIDGE - About $15.5 million of a special midyear appropriations package for science will go to support Oak Ridge-based work on an international fusion project, and another $2 million will supplement the funding at the Spallation Neutron Source. Jeff Sherwood, a Department of Energy spokesman in Washington , confirmed the numbers Wednesday and said the money is part of the $62.5 million approved by Congress to ease a funding crunch in DOE's Office of Science. "The intent is to eliminate the need for furloughs," Sherwood said. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/03/175m-to-support-or-based-work/
July 3, 2008 INL's waste problem has its roots in Cold War practices, Idaho Statesman Behind the Cold War's curtain of secrecy, federal scientists and engineers settled for shortsighted, inadequate practices to dispose of the long-lived, deadly nuclear materials produced by reactors and processing plants. Today, federal taxpayers are paying the price to clean it up at the Idaho National Laboratory. Plutonium-contaminated tools, clothes and debris packed in barrels and cardboard boxes were dumped with hazardous chemicals in trenches and buried atop the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, the water source for most of southern Idaho . The Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor of the Department of Energy, chose the floodplain sediments at the end of the Lost River to bury radioactive materials such as plutonium. It was a decision Idahoans have struggled with since. http://www.idahostatesman.com/102/story/432292.html
July 3, 2008 INL deal 14 years in the making, Idaho Statesman Kathleen Trever has spent more than the half-life of her career trying to safely get radioactive waste out of the ground in Idaho . For 14 years, Trever has worked to break a deadlock between the federal government and Idaho over nuclear waste buried above the Snake River Plain Aquifer, which provides drinking water to much of southern Idaho . On Monday, she saw the culmination of her work. "I feel like it's something that's important to the future of Idaho ," Trever said. The agreement settles a dispute that started in 1995 over how much waste the Department of Energy was responsible for removing from the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890-square-mile federal nuclear research area west of Idaho Falls . Idaho leaders praised the deal - as did former Govs. Phil Batt and Cecil Andrus, who pushed the cleanup in the 1990s. The anti-nuclear group Snake River Alliance gave its cautious endorsement. Program Director Beatrice Brailsford said she was happy to see the state get more cleanup than the federal government originally intended, and she hopes the days of the INL burying radioactive waste are over. http://www.idahostatesman.com/102/story/432291.html
July 1, 2008 EnergySolutions confident on waste deal despite new Senate bill, Tooele Transcript-Bulletin ( Salt Lake City ) A bill scheduled to be introduced in the U.S. Senate next week would forbid foreign-generated nuclear waste from being accepted by American disposal facilities. If passed, the bill would derail EnergySolutions' bid to take Italian nuclear waste at its Clive facility. The new bill, which is being introduced by Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., would generally ban all waste generated in foreign countries from being imported to the United States. EnergySolutions spokesman John Ward said the new bill is somewhat similar to a bill that was proposed in the House of Representatives in March by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, as well as fellow House Energy and Commerce Committee members Reps. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky.
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