The Energy Department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky lost power for about three hours Saturday.
A failed piece of electrical equipment caused one Tennessee Valley Authority power line to fall into other power lines that morning, Scott Brooks, a spokesman for the federal utility, said by email Wednesday. The TVA system provides electricity to the Paducah Site.
The failure was on a TVA line, and not directly on DOE property, Brooks said. However, power to the facility was temporarily lost. It was restored through a backup line to the Paducah Site.
A DOE spokesperson said the downed power line was at the boundary to the Paducah Site.
“Power to the site was restored early afternoon and offline systems began the process of powering back up,” the official said. “As a precaution the Emergency Operations Center was activated to monitor offline systems during the outage.” Most Paducah workers are off on Saturdays.
Commercial uranium enrichment at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant ceased in 2013. Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, comprised of Jacobs, Fluor and BWX Technologies, has a $1.5 billion deactivation and remediation contract for the 3,500-acre property, which with extensions would run to mid-2027.
The Energy Department has renewed a five-year grant worth roughly $7 million to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to familiarize state lawmakers and tribal governments with radioactive waste cleanup issues around the nuclear complex.
The DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center announced the grant on Monday. The funding is designed to help state lawmakers understand the practices of the department’s Offices of Environmental Management, Indian Energy, Nuclear Energy, and Legacy Management.
Potential topics include storage, transportation, and disposal of waste; future use of nuclear defense and national laboratory sites; and worker retraining after cleanup is finished. The cooperative agreement is also meant to school DOE officials on local concerns.
The announcement did not say specifically how the funds are to be used.
This is the third multiyear agreement between the parties, the two prior ones were together worth about $12.6 million.
Founded in 1975, NCSL is an umbrella advocacy group for state legislatures and their staffs. It was formed out of three smaller organizations. According to its website, the NCSL provides legislatures with “the tools, information and resources to craft the best solutions to difficult problems.”
Energy Department employees and contractors, and anyone with a smartphone, can now follow Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White on Twitter.
White, who made her introductory tweet as DOE cleanup chief on Sept. 12, goes by the handle @EMAssistantSec. As of early Friday she had 136 followers and seven tweets.
A tweet on Wednesday morning featured a picture of a stack coming down at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state. That was followed by a retweet of a Department of Energy joke in observance of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
This joke:
Q: Which National Lab do pirates like most?
A: Arrrrrrrrrgone.
The Energy Department on Sept. 12 declined a request to extend the bid proposal deadline for a small business contract to deactivate and tear down low-risk and low-complexity structures for the Oak Ridge Office Environmental Management in Tennessee.
In questions posted on the procurement website for the potential $25 million contract, an unidentified stakeholder asked DOE to allow another week for submissions so potential bidders could attend the department’s Nuclear Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va., last week, as well as the pre-proposal conference for the management and operations contract for the Savannah River Site during the week of Sept. 17. The SRS session was delayed by Hurricane Florence and is expected to be held in October.
The Energy Department replied it is not extending the amended deadline beyond 3 p.m. Eastern time on Sept. 24. The original deadline was to be Sept. 20.
In all, 27 primarily technical questions and answers about the procurement were posted Sept. 12. For example, DOE said it would not accept previously completed responses to past performance questions that were submitted for other federal procurements recently. The Energy Department also said the winning contractor will not be allowed to add members to its team or major subcontractors absent substitution of a new contract.
There are a number of old structures, containers, and concrete slabs in need of characterization and remediation at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), DOE said in its August solicitation.
After the characterization is done, the same contractor might be asked to do the actual deactivation and teardown, according to the notice.
