PHOENIX – Winning support for a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee took a lot of time and friendly arm-twisting, a member of the House Appropriations Committee told the Waste Management Symposia Monday via electronic hookup from Washington, D.C.
“For over 10 years we have needed a new disposal cell at Oak Ridge” and “this has been the hardest task I have engaged in,” U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) told the gathering during a luncheon address.
At various points, “we were stymied by our own state” along with DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said Fleischmann. The lawmaker, who now chairs the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, said getting to “yes” took time. It also involved much back-and-forth with officials ranging from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) to President Joe Biden’s EPA administrator, Michael Regan.
Fleischmann said he stressed to EPA and other stakeholders that approval of the new facility is vital to the cleanup of the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The current Environmental Management Waste Management Facility will be full by the end of the decade with waste from the former K-25 uranium enrichment complex, DOE has said previously.
In September, DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation signed the Record of Decision for the Environmental Management Disposal Facility.
That allows DOE to begin early site preparation activities and work toward final design of the facility to replace the existing 2.2-million cubic yard landfill that is nearing full capacity. That allows DOE to begin early site preparation and final design of the facility, a DOE Office of Environmental Management spokesperson said by email Monday.
Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge, the site’s cleanup prime, plans this summer to hire a subcontractor to start site preparation.Operations at the new landfill could begin in 2028 or 2029, DOE has said.
During a Wednesday panel discussion, Patrick Flood, a senior adviser with the Bureau of Environment at Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said many of the “stalled” issues were gradually worked out by a state-DOE-EPA-contractor task group.
“It took a lot of commitment, a lot of time,” said Glenn Adams of EPA. “There for a while we were meeting three hours a week every week” and it was during COVID, some most meetings were virtual, Adams said.
There were lots of groundwater issues to be worked out, and the parties resolved the situation through a groundwater demonstration study, which nobody liked but everybody found “minimally acceptable,” Flood said.
Fleischmann said that as chair of the appropriations subcommittee he worked to support nuclear cleanup not only at Oak Ridge but at the Hanford Site in Washington state as well as the other sites in the DOE weapons complex.
