The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a June legal settlement between the state and the Department of Energy to prevent mislabeled radioactive waste shipments from again ending up at the Nevada National Security Site dominate the site’s just released 2020 environmental report.
The settlement reached this summer calls upon DOE to increase the vetting and tighten the waste acceptance criteria for low-level and mixed low-level waste sent to the Nevada National Security Site from federal locations across the country, according to the 280-page report released this month.
In July 2019, DOE officials acknowledged a classified waste stream had been transported from the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and disposed of at Area 5 of the radioactive waste management complex area at Nevada. Follow-up talks between state and federal officials determined between January 2013 to December 2018, there were 10 “non-compliant shipments involving 33 waste containers” transported to Nevada from Y-12.
The disclosure raised the ire of Nevada’s governor and senators and sparked the DOE hierarchy appointed by the Donald Trump administration to examine the generation, characterization and transport of radioactive waste across the weapons complex.
COVID-19 was the other big issue for the Nevada site managed for the National Nuclear Security Administration by Mission Support and Test Services: a joint venture consisting of Honeywell, Jacobs and Huntington Ingalls. Navarro Research and Engineering is the cleanup contractor at the site for the Office of Environmental Management.
Waste shipments to the site were down due to COVID-19 staffing constraints and other activities, ranging from landfill inspections to the annual “Earth Day” celebration were scaled back or cancelled due to the pandemic, according to the report.
The occupational medical provider at the Nevada site is leading “an aggressive complex-leading COVID-19 vaccination program, which through mid-2021 had administered over 4,000 total vaccinations,” according to the report. About 70% of the Nevada National Security site was vaccinated as of last week.
