White Applauds Accomplishments, Lays Out Challenges in Workshop Address

EM Senior Advisor William “Ike” White praised recent progress in EM’s cleanup work and laid out a roadmap of future success as he kicked off the first full day of the annual National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Virginia on Sept. 22.

White was well received by the large crowd — 630 people attended in person, 91 virtually — who represented private industry, stakeholders around the sites where EM works and employees and contractors from across the EM complex.

The EM leader touched on the many successes in the program under his leadership, including:

• Demolition of a former gaseous diffusion process building at the Portsmouth Site.
• Removing more than seven miles of contaminated piping and over 50 tons of contaminated equipment from the West Valley Demonstration Project site, to prepare for demolition of the Main Plant Process Building, which began last week.
• Launching the teardown of a former reactor facility at Oak Ridge.
• Groundbreaking for the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative facility in South Carolina.
• Finishing a transuranic waste retrieval effort 18 months ahead of schedule at the DOE Idaho National Laboratory Site.
• Ongoing Hanford Site work along the Columbia River that will completely enclose the K-East Reactor.
• Continued acceleration of tank waste treatment at Savannah River Site (SRS) as well as treating Hanford tank waste on a large scale for the first time.

After pointing out that everyone in the room shares a commitment to advancing the EM cleanup mission, White warned of challenges to come, including maintaining a high quality and diverse workforce, enhancing technology research and development, and creating a clear future for key sites like SRS so they remain key to national security and scientific work.

“This workshop is an ideal forum to discuss these challenges, as well as opportunities to clear the decks and put EM on a path forward to achieve more in the coming decades,” he told the audience.

The workforce of the future is a particularly daunting task, White said, pointing to figures showing approximately 25% of EM employees are eligible to retire presently and almost half are eligible to retire in about five years.

“Across the entire EM complex, we have only 15 federal employees under the age of 30. But the good news is we have opportunities to address this challenge now if we work together and approach it broadly.”

A “high quality and diverse workforce that will continue the mission long after most of us in this room have retired” is a major priority for White, he said.

He listed the Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs and other EM initiatives to enhance employee retention, recruitment and development in all areas, to keep the edge in technology development in executing EM’s cleanup mission.

To help get EM moving closer to the finish line in the future, White announced the new EM Program Plan that describes the scope of remaining cleanup and long-term strategies to complete the mission. It identifies opportunities to complete cleanup earlier, and outlines a decision roadmap that EM will use as a guide over the next several decades.

He promised a transparent approach to long-term decision making, and said he and his leadership team will be engaging with stakeholders to accept feedback before the program plan is updated.

Ultimately, White said, EM can’t operate in a vacuum, and partnering would benefit everyone involved.

“We have a strong cleanup community — you are the people that make this happen. Together, we must seek out and be open to innovative approaches to complete the remaining 15 sites sooner without sacrificing safety or effectiveness. That includes addressing a handful of complex challenges that have far reaching impacts for the EM mission, decades into the future,” he said.