Site managers for the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) will discuss with stakeholders, elected officials, and regulators the proposals resulting from a review of the office’s operations that started in late June, according to Stacy Charboneau, EM associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations.
She discussed the 45-day review initiated by James Owendoff, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, at a meeting of Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board Chairs held Wednesday and Thursday near DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The department to date has not released a list of proposals or projects being considered under the review.
Site cleanup is a local issue, and the Office of Environmental Management is “not going to force on you a national standard,” Charboneau said. Owendoff often says “politics are local,” and site cleanup is local, too, she said. But stakeholders must consider how to do the best cleanup possible with the funding available, Charboneau added.
“From day one, this administration has been fully supportive of the EM program,” treating it as a legacy of the defense program, she said. But it is unrealistic to expect significant growth in coming years to the $6.5 billion budget request for fiscal 2018 for nuclear cleanup or for specific sites to expect to get a larger share of the budget than they traditionally have received, she said.
Budgets for Hanford’s Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office combined generally range from $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion. Yet, the work required to meet the new federal court-enforced consent decree schedule to have the Waste Treatment Plant fully operational by 2036 would require annual spending of $4 billion in peak years at Hanford, she said.
“We have got to look at what to do at Hanford for $2.2 billion that does not take us to 2090” to complete the site-wide cleanup, said Charboneau, who has previously served as manager of each of the Hanford DOE offices.
