There will be no slowdown in nuclear cleanup next autumn when the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management gives up its landlord role at the Savannah River Site, a citizens group heard Tuesday.
“What we are not transferring are any of the EM [environmental management] missions,” Michael Budney, operations manager for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) at the site, said at a meeting of the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board.
The Citizens Advisory Board itself will stay under EM and any environmental questions will stay with EM even after DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) takes over as landlord in October 2024, Budney said.
Amy Boyette, Savannah River public affairs manager, told the panel EM is shooting for a full briefing on the transition in November and hopes to have NNSA participate.
After the transition, “[a]round 10% of our budget” will move to NNSA from EM, Budney said. The transition plan puts the figure at $180 million shifting to NNSA.
NNSA will take over responsibility for the site’s security and operations contracts, including oversight of the common infrastructure for water, sewer and electricity, he said. The weapons stockpile steward will also manage the K-Area complex where plutonium and spent nuclear fuel are stored.
The existing operations and security contracts are handled respectively by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and Centerra. Both providers are already contracted well beyond 2025. NNSA will become responsible for doing the performance review and fee determination for the two contractors, with input from the Environmental Management office.
Any environmental permits being transferred to NNSA are “standard industrial permits” needed to operate in South Carolina, Budney said. This includes water discharges permits.
The Office of Environmental Management is now authorized for the equivalent of about 260 full-time federal people at the site, and 85 of the slots, many of them vacant, will move to NNSA, Budney said. Many transferred employees will continue doing their same work in their current office space, Budney said. The transition document also notes NNSA will need more office space than what is currently available in H Area.
Both NNSA and Environmental Management executives have stressed there will be no layoffs.
Advisory board member Charles Hilton, however, still fears cleanup could suffer after NNSA takes charge.
“EM has been very, very open with us,” Hilton said. “I’m concerned that I’ve never seen anybody from NNSA around this table.”
At least two sites managed by NNSA, the Nevada National Security Site and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, have Environmental Management advisory boards for the cleanup missions.
The transition plan was signed Sept. 13 by EM and NNSA heads William “Ike” White and Jill Hruby, and shared with Savannah River employees Monday, Boyette said. A memorandum of understanding will also be drafted, according to the transition plan.
While EM has been the federal office in charge of Savannah River since the 1990s, NNSA is doing more work there these days. That trend will accelerate as NNSA moves toward plutonium pit production at Savannah River: something the agency says will happen some time next decade.
By becoming a landlord, NNSA takes responsibility for routine needs such as “roads, bridges and grounds maintenance, emergency and safety, meteorology, mail services, and utilities,” according to the plan. NNSA will also bear chief responsibility for matters such as documents, dosimetry and environmental monitoring.
NNSA and the weapons cleanup office have been planning the changeover since October 2022. “The transition was deemed necessary given the steadily increasing NNSA mission requirements at the SRS and the concurrent progression of the EM clean-up mission toward a defined end-state,” according to the plan.
