LM, EM Honored With Secretary’s Award for Collaboration at Nuclear Conference

Two program offices of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have received a Secretary of Energy’s Appreciation Award for their successful collaboration at a stakeholder event in Ohio in fall 2023.

The Office of Legacy Management (LM) and Office of Environmental Management (EM) worked together to host the Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) workshop in Cincinnati, along with the NEA plenary business meeting in October 2023. The NEA is an international organization headquartered in France and is associated with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This was the first time the NEA workshop was held in the United States since the forum was established in 2000. The NEA’s Radioactive Waste Management Committee provides a platform to gather stakeholder input and bring all affected parties together on long term radioactive waste management solutions.

The EM-LM team structured the weeklong event for FSC members to engage stakeholders at two DOE sites — the Fernald Preserve near Cincinnati and the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. EM is remediating the Portsmouth site. LM manages long-term surveillance at the remediated Fernald Preserve.

LM Director Carmelo Melendez (LM-1) and then-EM Senior Advisor Ike White (EM-1) jointly nominated their offices for the award.

“EM and LM headquarters and site staff worked tirelessly for months coordinating all pre- and post-meeting logistics to include security processing for foreign nationals and local site security plans, transportation to and from each site for the FSC national workshop and business meetings and secured EM and LM speakers and stakeholders at all three locations,” Melendez and White wrote in their nomination letter.

They also noted that the team’s efforts enabled international scientists, engineers, technicians, and communications professionals to share information and explore best practices focused on building and maintaining relationships with impacted communities that host remediated nuclear facilities and help those communities return the land to beneficial reuse.

LM and EM federal staff and associated personnel were among the honorees at several virtual events in the spring.

LM Technical Director for Long-Term Stewardship Tania Smith Taylor said the award signifies the ability of LM to come together with another DOE office and an international planning committee to advance discussions on worldwide challenges.

“Members of the working group are all challenged with implementing effective programs to ensure stakeholder involvement and confidence in what their agencies are doing,” she said. “The group is committed to exploring best practices, mistakes, and everything in between that they can learn from and apply to their own programs.”

Taylor said it was important to discuss challenges in the context of different stages of the site cleanup cycle — specifically, remediation on EM’s part and long-term stewardship on LM’s part — to discuss how each mission engages people and keeps them and their environment healthy and safe.

“Both EM-1 and LM-1 were impressed and appreciative of the success and professionalism noted by workshop attendees,” Taylor said. “Attendees still remark on how much they learned from the interaction with site managers, site stakeholders, and each other. This is a testament to meticulous and excellent planning that went into hosting this workshop from the entire LM-EM team.”