The annual Radwaste Summit kicks off Wednesday morning in Summerlin, Nev., with presentations from top managers at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management as well as the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Jay Mullis II, acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs for the $7.6-billion cleanup office, is one of the morning keynote speakers.
During the two-day gathering, updates will be provided on work at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and remediation efforts at the Idaho National Laboratory, the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
The conference will also address technology, budget, community outreach and workplace issues around the DOE weapons complex.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina entered an outage May 13 as it prepares to switch over from formic acid to glycolic acid by October.
Going with glycolic acid at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) should lead to more efficient conversion of radioactive waste into glass, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a recent press release.
The DWPF use of formic acid generates hydrogen and produces ammonia as the acid reacts at elevated temperatures, DOE said, adding that glycolic acid should reduce off-gas hazards.
The changeover should also enable the new Salt Waste Processing Facility to run at high production rates since DWPF will be able to treat greater quantities of waste, DOE went on to say.
The DOE describes DWPF as the only operating radioactive waste glassification plant in the nation, which should change by the end of 2023 with the planned low-level waste operation of the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Contractor Savannah River Mission Completion operates both the DWPF and the SWPF for DOE at Savannah River.
The cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is taking down one Building 9213, previously known as the Criticality Experiment Laboratory, within the Y-12 National Security Complex.
United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), the site’s prime remediation contractor for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, is demolishing the 1949 vintage, 24,000 square foot building classified as an excess contaminated facility, the agency said in a May 31 news release.
Cleanup crews finished disconnecting the utilities to the structure, making it “cold and dark,” in agency terms, last year. The DOE hopes to complete demolition this fall, according to the release.
In prepping the building for demolition, workers removed and shipped about 1,500 linear feet of asbestos-laden pipes and various other material, DOE said in the release.
The Environmental Management contractor is working with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to take down multiple high-risk buildings around Y-12, DOE said in the release. It is the first excess contaminated facility to come down at Y-12 since the Biology Complex, or Mouse House, was torn down last year.
