A compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed Tuesday by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate at deadline Friday, would authorize funding for Department of Energy nuclear waste programs at the requested level for fiscal year 2022.
In the bill, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would get the requested $6.84 billion sought by the Joe Biden administration for Defense Environmental Cleanup at shuttered DOE nuclear-weapon production sites.
The bill authorizes the continuation of federal payments in lieu of taxes to areas around the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., which the administration proposed axing. Defense Environmental Cleanup is the biggest of the three main Environmental Management budget lines.
In addition, the measure would require DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration to develop “a comprehensive strategy for” disposing of nuclear waste created by the future plutonium-pit plants at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The Department of Energy will apply in 2022 for a state permit to resume the Test Bed Initiative at the Hanford site, which aims to test the feasibility of immobilizing some 2,000 gallons of liquid tank waste in concrete-like grout rather than glass, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Thursday.
DOE withdrew its last permit request for the test in 2019 after what the agency characterized as onerous terms offered by the Washington Department of Ecology.
For the second time in two months, the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site has dealt with a truck fire, according to a recently-published staff report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
A truck that workers used to move soil into a radiological buffer area in the West section of Hanford caught fire “and was quickly extinguished by the Hanford Fire Department,” according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff report dated Nov. 12.
The truck fire occurred Nov. 6, a DOE spokesperson said Monday by email. The investigation by Amentum-led contractor Central Plateau Clean Co. is now complete, the spokesperson said. The incident occurred roughly a month after an early October truck fire in the East area of the Hanford Site.
“Attendees noted that the truck’s wiring or battery was the source of the fire,” according to the DNFSB report. The battery had been recently replaced, though no issues with the new battery were identified prior to the fire.
Staff at the Hanford Site said the vehicle involved in the November fire was stored for about a year prior to being used and “the contractor does not have special provisions for long-term storage of vehicles,” to the DNFSB report. Instead it relies upon Department of Transportation inspections prior to usage to identify potential problems.
