As of Tuesday, there was only one field office serving the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the department’s largest nuclear cleanup job.
As previously reported, DOE consolidated its Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office into the Hanford Field Office effective Oct. 1.
The Richland Office opened in the 1960s while the Office of River Protection (ORP), was created in 1989 to oversee Hanford’s roughly 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, DOE said in an Oct. 1 press release. “With the capability of large-scale tank waste treatment now in the commissioning process through the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste facilities and program, the objective for which ORP was created has been effectively achieved,” Brian Vance, manager of the now-combined Hanford Field Office, said in the release.
The Nevada National Security Site got more than a third of its electricity from carbon-free sources during fiscal 2023, according to a report released last week by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Nevada Site received 1% of its power from on-site carbon-free sources and 34% of its power came from carbon-free sources purchased from the electric grid, according to the 2023 environmental report announced Sept. 26 by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
DOE is planning utility-scale carbon-free power on-site at Nevada as part of its Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative.
The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will hold a community forum and open house on Oct. 24 at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., according to a DOE announcement.
The session is planned from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. Mountain Time and will be run by DOE and WIPP prime, Bechtel-led Salado Isolation Mining Contractors. Links to both virtual registration and in-person attendance are available online.
WIPP is the nation’s only deep-underground disposal site for defense-related transuranic waste.
