Leaders from key EM sites speaking at the 2021 National Cleanup Workshop detailed achievements over the past several months, highlighting a new phase of progress in the cleanup program.
Office of Environmental Management
December 14, 2021
minute read time
Leaders from key EM sites speaking at the 2021 National Cleanup Workshop detailed achievements over the past several months, highlighting a new phase of progress in the cleanup program.
Speakers from Oak Ridge, Portsmouth, the Savannah River Site (SRS) and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) outlined activities that they said are enabling both short- and long-term value.
“These are accomplishments that don’t just have immediate benefits of risk reduction, but really help position the sites for a new era,” said discussion moderator Mike Nartker, EM chief of staff.
Oak Ridge is focusing on new goals after becoming the first site in the world to remove an entire uranium enrichment complex, which included the K-25 plant that measured a half mile long and was larger than the Pentagon. After more than two decades, the site was cleared of 500 contaminated buildings spanning the equivalent of 225 football fields.
“However, our work is not finished,” said Laura Wilkerson, acting manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. Crews have transitioned to cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that will involve more years of challenging cleanup work. Areas that are cleaned out can be utilized in future missions for the lab and the security complex.
“Despite these challenges, we’re very confident in our ability,” Wilkerson said. “That’s because we have an amazing workforce that is experienced and highly trained, and have already made significant skyline changes at these sites.”
At the Portsmouth Site, demolition began in May on the X-326 Process Building, the first of the site’s three massive uranium enrichment structures to be tackled. But Joel Bradburne, manager of the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, explained X-326 deactivation and demolition also was choreographed with the development of an onsite waste disposal facility and the excavation of legacy landfills and groundwater plumes for soil that will be used as fill. This innovative synchronized approach is expediting cleanup and providing more land for future reuse, a major priority for the local community.
“It’s a complete and comprehensive strategy that involved a lot of work and a lot of input from pretty much everyone,” Bradburne said. “It is complex and there needed to be orchestrated activity at the site because it involves a lot of work in various locations that have to be executed in harmony.”
Reinhard Knerr, manager of the Carlsbad Field Office that operates WIPP, said the site is making major advances in its infrastructure to support continued waste emplacement and optimum conditions for site workers, including the new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System and a utility shaft project that also included construction of a site bypass road to alleviate traffic.
“We remain the cornerstone of the Department’s cleanup efforts regarding transuranic waste, and in order to be able to continue that mission we need to make sure infrastructure at the site is able to support that long-term mission,” Knerr said.
Knerr credited strong support from the Carlsbad community and others in southeastern New Mexico and also in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the DOE laboratory and cleanup project ships waste to WIPP. “Without their continued support I don’t think we would be anywhere near as far along on waste emplacement activities and infrastructure upgrades,” he said.
At SRS, manager Mike Budney said EM is benefiting from the new contract status of the Savannah River National Laboratory as a standalone entity, apart from the site’s main cleanup contractor. The arrangement has enhanced the lab’s ability to provide independent analyses, and to attract work to support other contractors and sites in the EM complex, he said.
Budney said the lab operator, Battelle Savannah River Alliance, has involved local universities in its efforts, expanding a pipeline to young talent and potential SRS job recruits. The lab also is a key participant in planning for the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative (AMC), a facility that will serve as an innovation hub supporting research that can be adapted into modern manufacturing and industrial practices.
“That will be the place we can eventually see more transitions in technologies from the lab to industry,” Budney said of the AMC.
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