Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
10/24/2014
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla.—South Carolina is pushing for a $150 million investment in increasing tank waste processing at the Savannah River Site, but will seek a court order if conflict with the Department of Energy on tank closure milestones is not settled in the dispute resolution process, a state official said here this week at the Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum. The state could levy up to $150 million in fines, and DOE and South Carolina recently entered dispute resolution after the state denied milestone extension requests for the next two tanks slated for closure. “We are going to be politely cooperating with that but we have other arrows in our quiver that don’t require us to go through the [Alternative Dispute Resolution] process,” South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Director Catherine Templeton said. “However, it’s my intention to make sure that whatever the resolution is, if it’s not cooperative that it comes from a court order. The reason for that is not that we want to fight, but it’s because DOE has the authority to turn around and take $150 million more dollars out of the Savannah River Site budget instead of paying their penalties out of the judgment fund. So I need an order if I don’t get cooperation so that the money comes out of the judgment fund and doesn’t further disable SRS.”
South Carolina says it will not extend milestones if DOE does not request the money to fully fund processing. “We will not move milestones because the Department of Energy decides to starve the treatment systems that are so valuable to the risk reductions,” Templeton said. Rather than pay $150 million in penalties for missed milestones, the state is urging DOE to invest that money in increasing liquid waste processing at the site. The site’s interim salt waste processing capability and vitrification facilities are not projected to be running at full capacity in the coming years due, in part, to funding issues and storage limitations. “There’s no way at this point to meet the milestones. It is important, however, that if that $150 million penalty is invoked that it be used for the high level liquid waste. So, we are not going to forgive it, unless it is used to clean up as best as possible at this point the high level liquid waste,” Templeton said.
DOE Projects Tank Closure Extend 10 Years Past Commitments
DOE in August requested an extension for the 2015 milestone for Tanks 12 and 16, which was denied by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency. The dispute resolution is the first as more than a dozen tanks at the site are at risk of missing closure milestones under the Federal Facilities Agreement with the state due to a issues including budget cuts, delays in the startup of the site’s main Salt Waste Processing Facility and technical issues. In DOE’s latest SRS liquid waste system plan, the closure date for all old style-tanks was moved to 2032, 10 years beyond regulatory commitments.
Enacted funding for the Savannah River liquid waste program stood at $838.5 million in Fiscal Year 2013, which has dropped down to a current level of $690.5 million. DOE’s FY’15 budget requests $722.8 million for the liquid waste program. Meanwhile, the SWPF is expected to greatly increase tank processing rates, but has had its startup pushed back from 2014 to 2018.
There are a number of steps the Department could take to increase waste processing that would cost less than the potential penalty, Templeton said. “For example, if you fund the existing treatment facilities to run at maximum capacities, it requires paying the contractors and hiring employees, but it doesn’t come close to $150 million,” she said. “If you get the Salt Waste Processing Facility online as quickly as possible, well under $150 million. Committing the Next Generation Solvent for the SWPF would skyrocket its treatment capacity, well under $150 million. Add the other treatment capacities such as the Small Column Ion Exchange, well under $150 million.”
DOE: SRS Tank Processing Will Operate ‘At the Maximum Extent Possible’
DOE officials this week said that tank waste cleanup will be funded as much as possible given budget constraints. The tank waste at Savannah River is “one of the highest priorities for Environmental Management,” DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody said here. “I can’t speak specifically to the $150 million but I can tell you that the Department is committed to funding under sequestration as much as possible to operate our facilities at the maximum extent possible in this current budget environment that we find ourselves.”
The site is also improving efficiencies in the current liquid waste system that could also help the waste processing effort. “Along with additional funding, there’s also being more efficient and getting better at operating your system. I have to say that with the additional work under H-Canyon, our contractors have done a very good job in trying to look at minimizing the waste that would be coming over from H Canyon to the liquid waste system,” DOE-EM Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tank Waste and Nuclear Material Jay Rhoderick said here. “So I think that money of course is an important issue, but there are other things that we need to implement, such as trying to operate the system in the most efficient manner possible.”
DOE and liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation are using efficiencies accelerate closure of all of the tanks currently behind schedule, SRR President Stuart MacVean said here this week. “In fact at Tank 16, it is looking like we are going to be able to pull that schedule back in and actually meet its commitment date due to efficiencies … and making sure we remove all constraints around it,” MacVean said. “A lot of effort going into efficiencies and lessons learned from the previous activities.”
SC: ‘The Budget is Critical’
But for South Carolina, “the budget is critical,” SCDHEC Federal Facilities Liaison Shelly Wilson said here this week. “If they ask for enough money and Congress does not give enough to meet the milestones, then DOE is off the hook. That’s in our Federal Facility Agreement. But in this particular case, we do not believe that DOE asked for sufficient funding to meet the milestones,” she said. When asked if focusing on regaining schedule through efficiencies would be sufficient, Wilson said: “We have asked for DOE to put something on the table and put forward the best fix to maximize treatment to be able to preserve the milestones as much as possible and we’re still waiting to hear what that potential fix could be.”
Templeton: It’s ‘Unprecedented’ For SC to Push Back Against DOE at SRS
DOE initially was not responsive to the state’s demands for increased funding for Savannah River tank waste, last year answering to protests of the FY’14 budget with a “deafening silence,” Templeton said. “Historically, South Carolina has never said no,” she said. “When the budget request came out and the proposal was not going to take care of the Federal Facilities Agreement, we notified them immediately to say, ‘You’re going to have an environmental problem at this point and it’s not caused by some technical issue. You don’t have the money in here, and that’s not okay. Under the Federal Facilities Agreement that’s not a reason. We’re not going to agree to it.’ I don’t know that they took it seriously, because it was a deafening silence. We reminded them again, nothing and then we said we really mean it. We’ve really meant it for so many years, it’s unprecedented in South Carolina that we would push back against the DOE at SRS.”
