WC Monitor
2/5/2016
Kacich to Take Over Management of LANL Legacy Cleanup
Richard Kacich, who was appointed deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in November, on Feb. 8 will become the top manager for the lab’s legacy waste cleanup contract with the Energy Department, according to an internal memo.
“In addition to Rick’s broader responsibilities, I have asked him to take on a direct leadership role for the Laboratory’s activities under the new Legacy Clean-up Bridge Contract,” LANL Director Charles McMillan wrote in a Wednesday all-hands email obtained by the Weapons Complex Monitor.
The bridge contract, between DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the lab management consortium led by Bechtel and the University of California, was awarded in September and could be worth some $310 million through September 2017. The one-year base period is worth roughly $160 million; a pair of six month options are worth just over $70 million each. It is intended to be followed by award of a longer-term contract for lab cleanup work.
Also effective Feb. 8, LANL’s Associate Directorate for Environmental Programs, the group within the lab that oversees cleanup activities, will be renamed the Associate Directorate for Environmental Management — a change reflecting the impending split of LANL management and operations from legacy cleanup activities. Cleanup had for years been funded by EM but managed under LANS’ operations contract with the National Nuclear Security Administration. That deal also expires in September 2017.
Kacich spent 30 years in industry before joining LANL, most recently at Bechtel, where he was project operations manager for the Waste Treatment Plant the company is building to treat some 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
"The changes announced today at Los Alamos National Laboratory are an organizational realignment that leverages the extensive environmental management experience of our new Deputy Lab Director, Rick Kacich," a LANL spokesman said by email.
Randy Erickson remains associate director of the soon-to-be-renamed Associate Directorate for Environmental Programs.
Report Proposes Tweaks to Construction Protocols at LANL Waste Facility
Construction of a roughly $100 million shipping-and-handling facility for radiologically contaminated equipment and soil at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is generally well run, but the Energy Department and its prime contractor at the New Mexico site should tighten construction standards and increase project oversight, DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) said Jan. 29.
The EA report details a May investigation of the Transuranic Waste Facility that J. B. Henderson Construction Co. of Albuquerque is building as a subcontractor to Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the consortium that manages and operates the lab for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The report said LANS should limit the amount of entrained air in concrete mixtures used to build the new waste facility — more air makes concrete easier to work with, but can also make it crack more easily — and require two kinds of tests instead of one to confirm soil at the construction site has been packed down tightly enough to support the building being erected there.
The report also said the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Acquisition and Project Management, which oversees construction of new nuclear facilities, “has not established and implemented an effective issues management program” and should tune up its oversight to comply with DOE standards for finding and correcting problems that arise during construction.
In a March 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, DOE said LANL’s Transuranic Waste Facility would open between April 30, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2018, and would cost some $300 million to operate for 50 years, on top of its $100 million construction tab.
The Transuranic Waste Facility will process waste bound for underground interment at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M., some 300 miles south of LANL. For now, LANL will continue to store both new and old transuranic waste at Material Disposal Area G, the lab’s most contaminated storage area. New transuranic waste has been piling up at LANL since WIPP stopped receiving shipments after an underground fire and radiation release in 2014. DOE plans to reopen WIPP in December.
DNFSB Member Disputes Need for Public Hearing Over LANL Area G
One member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board thinks the group should not waste its time with a public hearing over the highly contaminated waste dump at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Area G, according to a voting record released Feb. 2.
The five-member DNFSB voted last week to hold a public hearing about waste-handling at Area G, which was catapulted into the public consciousness after improperly sealed waste originating from the site caused a radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The hearing will happen around March, a Department of Energy official said Jan. 27 at a meeting of the agency-chartered Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board.
Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Sean Sullivan said he does not see the point of the hearing and bucked his four DNSFB colleagues in the vote, disapproving of the hearing “because the proposed agenda focuses solely on the issue of waste management at LANL’s Area G. That issue, while important, is not the most significant issue at Los Alamos threatening the public health and safety.”
Sullivan’s brief comment, written on the voting record posted on DNFSB’s website, did not specify what the former naval officer considered the No. 1 public health hazard at the 73-year-old laboratory.
"I do not understand why after two years of improvements in the situation the Area G issue has suddenly eclipsed all others of concern to DNFSB," Sullivan stated.
