With a large budget request, a programmatic review process encompassing top officials at Department of Energy headquarters and sites, and political appointees who seem to share a “bias for action,” there is cause for optimism about increasing the pace of cleanup of DOE’s nuclear legacy, officials said Wednesday.
That was the sense that emerged following a day of speakers at the department’s annual National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va., and then an evening panel discussion on Capitol Hill convened by the House of Representatives’ Nuclear Cleanup Caucus.
James Owendoff, acting assistant energy secretary for environmental management, said the recently completed 45-day review of EM operations is intended to empower DOE cleanup managers to determine “where can we make the best decisions at each of the sites.”
The current atmosphere is reminiscent of the 1990s with “a bias toward action [and an attitude that] it can all get done,” said Ken Rueter, president and project manager for Oak Ridge, Tenn., Site cleanup prime URS-CH2M Oak Ridge.
The Trump administration’s first federal budget would boost funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) in the next fiscal year to $6.5 billion, which is about 1.4 percent more than the 2017 enacted level. Funding will remain frozen at current levels until at least Dec. 8 under a continuing resolution passed last week.
The House of Representatives in July approved a $6.4 billion EM budget as part of its broader energy appropriations proposal, while the Senate Appropriations Committee went slightly above the administration request with a $6.6 billion DOE cleanup budget. The full Senate has yet to vote on its energy funding bill.
Presuming Congress eventually passes an EM budget within the parameters of the administration, House, and Senate numbers, Owendoff said the department should have ample finances to carry out key projects – provided it can make key decisions. An example of such a decision would be whether the tanks that hold 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state should eventually be closed via grouting, as is being done at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Owendoff said.
In addition, Owendoff thinks EM can use the influence or “the juice” from Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Undersecretary Dan Brouillette to move key initiatives along. Both men have their “thumb on my chest” to make important decisions, Owendoff said.
In his own appearance Wednesday at the Cleanup Workshop, Brouillette said the Trump administration wants cleanup done “sooner, safer, and at less cost to the taxpayer,” though he did not discuss specific strategies to meet these goals.
One observer noted later that Perry, a former Texas governor, sets a different tone than Obama administration energy secretaries Ernest Moniz and Steven Chu. Both Moniz and Chu spent much time in the academic world and gravitated toward study and analysis of issues, the source said. Many believe that Perry will be more project-oriented.
The continuing resolution puts on hold, at least temporarily, the Trump administration’s plans to transfer excess facilities from DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration to Environmental Management for final cleanup. The Energy Department wanted $225 million for that work in fiscal 2018. The House energy appropriations bill would provide $75 million for facilities in California, Idaho, and Tennessee; the Senate would give even less, $55 million for only the California and Tennessee plants.
In his opening remarks during the evening panel discussion on the Hill, Rueter suggested that building momentum will help push key cleanup projects at the Hanford Site, Savannah River Site, and Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
“We have a high-level liquid waste challenge at Savannah River,” said SRS Operations Office Manager Jack Craig. “We have 35 million gallons of liquid high-level” from Cold War nuclear weapons operations waiting to be processed for permanent storage.
A system-wide liquid waste processing outage at the Savannah River Site is sexpected to last through the end of the year, as workers continue to make strides in other key areas of the SRS liquid waste mission.