RW Monitor
6/20/2014
AT FUKUSHIMA
The Tokyo Electric Power Company is reportedly having a difficult time with the beginning stages of the construction of its ‘ice wall’ at the Fukushima-Daiichi cleanup. The ice wall is part of TEPCO’s larger plan that also includes a well pumping system to prevent the further spread of groundwater contamination that has been plaguing the site’s cleanup. According to reports from the London-based Guardian, TEPCO is struggling with a smaller, inner ice wall whose pipes it sank earlier to contain the already-contaminated water. To form the wall, the company is placing pipes into the ground which will carry a coolant meant to freeze the surrounding ground. “We have yet to form the ice stopper because we can’t make the temperature low enough to freeze water,” a TEPCO spokesman told the Guardian. “We are behind schedule but have already taken additional measures, including putting in more pipes, so that we can remove contaminated water from the trench starting next month.”
IN THE INDUSTRY
Matt McCormick has started work at Kurion just days after retiring as the manager of the Department of Energy Richland Operations Office at Hanford. He will lead work to remove strontium from more than 400,000 tons of contaminated water stored in tanks near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. The Kurion Mobile Processing System that will be used for the project was designed and built in the Tri-Cities near Hanford, and McCormick plans to continue to live in the Tri-Cities. McCormick will be in Japan this week where a prototype system is in place. The full-scale mobile system, which is still being finished and tested at HiLine Engineering and Fabrication in Richland, should be shipped to Japan in July. “Matt brings a tremendous level of senior project and program management expertise that will immediately benefit our work at Fukushima,” said John Raymont, Kurion founder and president. David Carlson, the Kurion project director who oversaw the Kurion Mobile Processing System concept, design and fabrication, will lead other international projects for Kurion, Raymont said.
McCormick picked Kurion to join after 32 years of public service because of its multiple technologies that are applicable to Fukushima and elsewhere in the nuclear industry, he said. He also was attracted to doing work in Japan, where he has family ties and empathy for the Japanese people who have coped with the aftermath of the March 2011 tsunami, he said. McCormick’s wife, Shirley Olinger, the past manager of the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection and founder of Independent Strategic Management Solutions, has relatives in Japan. “I have had the opportunity to work on some of the toughest domestic nuclear waste challenges while at the Department of Energy, and I look forward to offering my experience at sites like Fukushima,” McCormick said. McCormick came to Hanford in 2000 from Rocky Flats and was named manager of the Hanford Richland Operations Office in 2010.
USEC has named Scott McKinney as the new manager of technical services at the American Centrifuge Plant, reporting to Dan Rogers, general manager of American Centrifuge Plant operations. McKinney served as engineering manager at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant since 2011, and replaces a technical services manager who is retiring. “Scott’s engineering management experience in an enrichment operations environment is a great asset to our team as we continue to preserve the centrifuge technology as a reliable and economic domestic uranium enrichment capability for national security,” Rogers said in a release.
IN NWTRB
President Barrack Obama re-appointed late last week five members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The list includes the reappointment of Rodney Ewing as Chairman of the Board, a position that Ewing has held since 2012. The other members re-appointed include: Sue Clark, Linda Nozick, Kenneth Peddicord, and Paul Turinsky. The Board acts as a technical oversight organization for the Department of Energy’s research and handling of nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board announced late last week that it will host a meeting later this summer to discuss the Department of Energy’s plans for the packaging, transportation, and disposal of high-level waste. The meeting is scheduled for Aug. 6, 2014 in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Board will discuss DOE’s latest research plans to better understand the disposal of high-level waste, including, “extended storage of SNF [spent nuclear fuel] at DOE sites, treatment of DOE SNF in preparation for offsite transportation and disposal, research and development related to dry-cask storage of high burnup SNF, aging management of SNF storage facilities, and the transportation of damaged SNF,” the Board said.
