Tearing down 10 contaminated Department of Energy buildings must precede further cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, California state officials said during an online meeting June 11.
Representatives of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) expect final state approval next month of the DOE plan announced in May to demolish deteriorating buildings within the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility (RMHF) Complex.
The DTSC is responsible for approving a decommissioning and demolition plan that meets all applicable requirements, agency spokesman Russ Edmondson said in Wednesday email. This includes a 2010 administrative order on consent between the state and the Energy Department.
Asked why remediation of soil and underground components at the facility are not included in the plan, managers from both state agencies said demolishing the buildings to the slab should occur first.
The Energy Department agreed to dismantle most of the buildings at the 2-acre Radioactive Materials Handling Facility, an area of DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center at Santa Susana built 60 years ago to handle nuclear fuel. The buildings are laden with radionuclides, heavy metals, solvents, oils, asbestos, and greases.
The removal plan targets above-ground portions of the buildings. For the time being, the asphalt, concrete slabs, and foundations will remain in order to provide a barrier to the soil and any subsurface structures, according to one of the state slides included in the presentation.
Residents around the 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory, along with the state of California, have pushed for prompt demolition of the buildings before a wildfire might burn some of the structures at DOE’s portion of the site and disburse contaminants into the air. In November 2018, the Woolsey Fire charred 96,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura County, including parts of Santa Susana. None of the DOE buildings burned.
The Energy Department expects to complete demolition and haul away the debris to a licensed low-level radioactive waste facility within six months. It says funding for the project, not expected to cost more than $9 million, is already in place in fiscal 2020, which ends Sept. 30.
A maximum of 16 truckloads of debris per day will leave the radioactive materials site, though the number most days will be far below that cap, according to the state presentation. Haul routes will vary in order to lessen the impact on specific communities near the site. Shipments will take place between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The Energy Department is working with the state to finalize plans for demolishing the other eight buildings at the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility not covered by this agreement. California is completing the long-awaited Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and, thereafter, the decision documents that will describe how DOE will complete remediation of its portion of Santa Susana, Edmondson said.
The spokesman said the PEIR will be done this year.
The removal of soil and below-grade media at RMHF will occur after the state finalizes the impact report and approves cleanup decision-making documents, Edmondson added. The PEIR has been delayed since 2018 as the California agency reviews public comments on the document.
The Energy Department used about 472 acres at Santa Susana, including the Energy Technology Engineering Center, for research into nuclear power and liquid metal technology from the 1950s until the 1980s. Most of the DOE structures have since been dismantled.
In addition to DOE, other parties responsible for environmental remediation at Santa Susana are NASA and Boeing. The overall timeline for the final work will be defined after the PEIR is released.
