Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
7/18/2014
As some cleanup work at the Savannah River Site is winding down, the site’s managing contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, is looking to emphasize the role SRS facilities can play in future national security and nonproliferation missions, new SRNS President Carol Johnson told WC Monitor in a recent interview. A number of cleanup activities SRNS has performed at Savannah River, such as facility D&D and transuranic waste disposition, is wrapping up. The focus is now shifting to site facilities like H-Canyon, HB-Line and L-Area, as well as the Tritium Facilities and Savannah River National Laboratory. “We have to work hard to ensure that we are viewed as a national asset,” Johnson said. She added, “We are really the only place in the country that can do the work that is needed for national security and nonproliferation. I’d like to see the tide turned a bit towards the importance of those missions. Of course, we are still an [Office of Environmental Management site] and are supporting the EM mission of cleanup and the high-level waste mission. But I would like to see us more as a national asset relative to keeping the world safe as a longer-term mission.”
Johnson was named to head SRNS in May and comes to the Fluor-led contractor most recently from URS, where she retired from Washington Closure Hanford in late 2013. Before that, she was the infrastructure executive director at the U.K.’s Sellafield project and spent much of her early career at Savannah River, among other sites. “I never really in a million years thought I would get a call and be asked to consider leading Savannah River Nuclear Solutions,” she said. “So I was quite surprised and humbled to be offered the position. I spent 21 years here and worked in a lot of the facilities, so it’s a bit of coming home.”
However, she takes over at a tough time for Savannah River. Budgets have been cut for the site after an influx of Recovery Act funds several years ago, and funding issues led to furloughs for thousands of SRNS employees last year. The relationship between the Department of Energy and local stakeholders, including South Carolina state officials, has deteriorated over a series of setbacks. Those include the 2010 shutdown of Yucca Mountain, formerly the planned destination for the state’s high level waste, as well as DOE’s proposed shutdown of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which had been the pathway for processing plutonium in South Carolina. Additionally, due to funding issues DOE is set to miss a host of high-level tank waste cleanup commitments to the state.
‘We Have to Be Open and Transparent’
DOE and SRNS are considering a host of new missions for site facilities, such as processing of large amounts of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium from Canada and Germany. But those plans have been met with some opposition in South Carolina over concerns regarding the waste that would be generated. SRNS should play a role in informing stakeholders of proposals, Johnson said. “From the time I left this community to coming back now, there’s been a change in support. I think there is some distrust. We have to be open and transparent about what we are thinking about doing and what the plans are,” she said. “I think the state of South Carolina is supportive of our work. But they want to make sure that there is a disposition path for the waste out of the state. That’s where the hard spot is right now. It’s important to get the [Waste Isolation Pilot Plant] reopened, and it’s important to have some longer-term disposition paths.”
Maintenance Backlog an Issue
With funding tight at Savannah River, one concern isaddressing maintenance backlogs at the site’s aging facilities needed to complete the new missions. “We are not making a lot of headway in corrective maintenance backlog reduction. I’m worried about that. I don’t know how much progress we are really going to make,” Johnson said.
SRNS does have a maintenance improvement plan and is also recruiting new people to work in the area. “I do think that there are some efficiencies we need to make in our work planning and control process to make it less burdensome for people doing the work,” Johnson said. “We need to tackle that problem. We’ve layered on and layered on paper into our system and that may not be adding value. I think that’s a targeted opportunity, but at the end of the day how much of an impact that is going to make on reducing the backlog is still to be determined.”
Improvements Underway for Conduct of Operations
Another ongoing challenge for SRNS has been conduct-of-operations issues at H-Canyon and other site facilities—the Department has raised the issue numerous times this year and last. “We have had issues, and we have ongoing improvement plans in engineering and maintenance and operations,” Johnson said. “I think that conduct of ops is a journey. It’s something that you have to focus on all the time. We have to continue to nourish the safety culture, and nourish conduct of ops with training, management, support, independent oversight. All of those things have to be in place. It’s not something you touch once and put a plan in place and do actions and walk away from. Sustaining it is very important.”
Given that the workforce at Savannah River is aging, with 50 percent of SRNS employees eligible to retire in the next three years, Johnson is also focusing on human capital concerns. “We have a big challenge ahead of us in terms of making sure we have a pipeline of qualified engineers, operators, operations staff, such that we can safely operate these facilities in a stable fashion” she said. “Those are things tied to the mission that we have to underpin with both physical infrastructure and human capital infrastructure.”
‘We Have to Continue to Beat that Drum’
The people are the key to getting work done, Johnson emphasized. “The site has gone through a lot over the past few years. There was a big bump up in AARA work and then on the back side of that a pretty significant reduction—something like 22 percent of our workforce has been reduced over the last couple of years. That’s substantial,” she said. “I’d like to focus on the people and making sure we’ve given them the tools they need to do their jobs effectively, efficiently and safely. The Savannah River Site is extremely important to our nation, I really believe that. We have to continue to beat that drum so it is recognized as important, in support of the EM mission but well beyond the EM mission.”
