Environmental Remediation

The Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it is adding Oklahoma’s Fansteel Metals/FMRI Superfund site to the National Priorities List. The list includes the nation’s most serious uncontrolled or abandoned releases of contamination and serves as the basis for prioritizing EPA Superfund cleanup funding and enforcement actions.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has issued a draft request for proposal for a contract covering the next phase of cleanup at the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York.

Demolition is underway on several former chemical storage tanks and associated infrastructure near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) plant, the final and most advanced chemical separations facility at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of September.

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently removed a complex piece of equipment that had been standing in the way of future tank waste retrieval.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has awarded a $2 million grant to the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce for its work in considering the possible future uses of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Kentucky. The project will consist of site mapping, community studies, data analysis, and development of recommended strategies.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has released its Strategic Vision 2023–2033, a blueprint of the office’s anticipated cleanup achievements over the next decade. DOE-EM said the strategic vision is focused on the priorities of addressing radioactive liquid tank waste, demolishing contaminated buildings, remediating contaminated soil and groundwater, and safely managing and disposing of waste.

“The Strategic Vision 2023–2033 is intended to help us gaze further out to a place we want to be in the future,” DOE-EM senior advisor William “Ike” White said. “It sets EM on a course that will span a decade and inspire us all to achieve EM’s vital nuclear cleanup mission.”

After nearly three years of discussions and more than 60 mediation sessions, the Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology, and the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they have reached a conceptual agreement on revising plans for managing millions of gallons of waste stored in tanks at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.

EnergySolutions subsidiary KewauneeSolutions is hoping to begin site restoration work at the closed Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin later this year and has submitted a request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use the plant’s decommissioning trust fund to do so.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed adding the Fansteel Metals Superfund site in Muskogee, Okla., to the National Priorities List (NPL), the roster of the nation’s most contaminated sites that threaten human health or the environment. By adding this site to the NPL, the EPA said it can prioritize funding for cleanup and necessary enforcement action.

Representatives from the Japan Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF) recently visited the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the Hanford Site in Washington state to promote collaboration and provide updates on the status and plans to decommission Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, caused damage to the plant and surrounding communities. The NDF was created in September 2011 to oversee the decommissioning and cleanup of the plant, which is owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

New legislation that would require the cleanup of Jana Elementary School in suburban St. Louis was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.). The Justice for Jana Elementary Act would also order the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to test all properties in the Hazelwood School District, of which Jana Elementary is a part.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has released the site of the La Crosse boiling water reactor in Wisconsin for unrestricted public use. The action comes after the NRC found that EnergySolutions subsidiary LaCrosseSolutions had met the agency’s radiation protection standards in decommissioning the nuclear power plant.

The Department of Energy recently honored eight teams from its Office of Environmental Management (EM) with Secretary of Energy 2022 Achievement Awards. The awards recognized projects at the DOE’s Idaho, Savannah River, and Hanford sites, as well as a group of employees that revamped and expanded DOE-EM’s Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program (MSIPP-EM). In addition, DOE-EM employees on crosscutting departmental teams received awards.

The awards were part of the DOE’s annual Honor Awards, the agency’s highest form of employee recognition for excellence and achievement.

Jesus Zamora

Regardless of the specific field you work in or how your daily tasks are performed, digital technology does not go unnoticed, and the environmental remediation field is no exception. Digital technology can be defined as electronic tools, services, or devices that create, store, transmit, and manage data. As technology evolves, so do the ways in which it can be incorporated into remediation activities.

Adequate incorporation of these technologies can greatly improve both workflow and productivity while enhancing the quality and maintaining the integrity of data. My team and I have been able to connect radiological instruments to computers wirelessly, collect millions of radiological measurements, track the approximate location of these measurements, save measurements automatically in a database, and access them at will.

In May 2019, Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Pike County, Ohio, located within four miles of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), was closed after local officials reported enriched uranium and transuranic radionuclides were detected inside the school and at outside air monitors.

Now, Cincinnati’s WKRC Local 12, a news affiliate of Sinclair Broadcast Group, is reporting that a private house in Lucasville, Ohio, 10 miles from the PORTS site, has been contaminated with enriched uranium.

United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), the lead environmental cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM), has been named one of the Knoxville News Sentinel’s “Top Workplaces” in eastern Tennessee for 2022. The award is the result of a confidential, third-party survey of UCOR’s 2,000-member workforce by the Knoxville News Sentinel and the survey company Energage.

The area near the Hanford Site’s former K reactors is buzzing with activity as several of the Department of Energy’s environmental cleanup projects continue near the Columbia River in Washington state.

That’s not the only thing that’s buzzing, however. While preparing some old equipment for removal earlier this spring, workers with Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo), a contractor of the DOE Office of Environmental Management Richland Operations Office, discovered a large colony of native bees.

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio have been using a new tool as part of the dust-suppression systems for the X-326 process building demolition project. The X-326 was one of three massive process buildings originally built to enrich uranium at the site, which was in operation starting in the 1950s. Environmental remediation of the site began in 1989, and deactivation and decommissioning activities began in 2011. Demolition of the facility has led to a dusty work environment.

Officials from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management recently got a firsthand look at cleanup progress being made at the Paducah Site in western Kentucky. The site is owned by the DOE, which is overseeing environmental cleanup activities there, including environmental remediation, waste management, depleted uranium conversion, and decontamination and decommissioning.

The visit by Dae Chung, associate principal deputy assistant secretary for corporate services, and other EM officials included stops at the C-400 cleaning building remediation project, the new Large Item Neutron Assay System (LINAS), and the C-333 process building deactivation.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, attorney general Lawrence Wasden, Idaho legislators, county and city representatives, and the Department of Energy’s cleanup program management staff gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory site on March 30 to mark the completion of a cleanup project that helps protect the Snake River Plain Aquifer and fulfills a commitment with the State of Idaho.