EM Updates Cleanup 'By the Numbers'

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 the Strategic Vision 2021-2031, a blueprint to the program’s anticipated accomplishments over the next decade that will protect the public and environment.

Some tidbits from the new “By the Numbers:”

• 932 facilities, many contaminated, have been demolished at the Hanford Site.
• More than 60,000 cubic meters of managed transuranic and mixed low-level waste at the Idaho National Laboratory Site has been shipped offsite for disposal.
• 36 monitoring, extraction, and injection wells have been installed in and around the hexavalent chromium plume at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Site. These wells and associated infrastructure support characterization and migration of the plume via an interim measure.
• More than 11.6 million tons of tailings at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project have been shipped for disposal, amounting to 72% of the total tons.
• About 51.3 million cubic feet of classified and low-level waste/mixed low-level waste has been disposed at the Nevada National Security Site radioactive waste disposal facilities since 1961.
• $500 million was saved by completing major cleanup four years early at the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Oak Ridge Site.
• 66 million pounds of scrap metal — enough to build a World War I battleship — has been removed from storage yards at the Paducah Site. Contaminated scrap metal was a major contributor to surface water contamination.
• EM expects to complete the demolition of all remaining DOE-owned buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center by the end of 2021.
• More than 124 million pounds of total waste has been shipped/disposed offsite from the Portsmouth Site to date.
• About 1.56 million cubic yards of ash and materials was remediated as part of the D Area Ash Project at the Savannah River Site. The project cleaned up nearly 60 years of byproducts from the now-closed, coal-powered D Area Powerhouse.
• 15 acres of land has been remediated at the Separations Process Research Unit.
• 263,205 containers have been emplaced in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant underground.
• Over 50 countries have collaborated with the Savannah River National Laboratory.
• 68 surplus facilities have been removed from the West Valley Demonstration Project.