The Department of Energy now expects to restart an underground fan at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico by early fall as a means to bolster airflow until a new permanent ventilation system is operational in a few years.
Restarting the 700-C underground fan should add about 90,000 cubic feet per minute, bringing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s (WIPP) underground air circulation to about 240,000 cubic feet per minute. Originally targeted for deployment this month, a DOE spokesperson said this week final testing “and balancing activity” is now expected in late summer.
“This activity ensures the 700-C fan is fully operational while allowing ventilation engineers to properly balance additional airflow in the WIPP underground,” the DOE spokesperson said in a Wednesday email. “Once the fan passes all final tests, the unit will be put back into operation.”
It has not been used since 2014, the year in which a February underground radiation leak damaged the WIPP underground and effectively shut down transuranic waste disposal for about three years.
Once the new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System starts running in 2025, airflow should reach about 540,000 cubic feet per minute and DOE plans to be able to conduct waste emplacement, salt mining and maintenance at the same time.
James Klein and Eliel Villa-Aleman have been awarded the title of laboratory fellows at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) in South Carolina for their scientific achievements during decades of research and development at the facility, the new Battelle-led lab management contractor said recently.
“We proudly recognize these two distinguished individuals for their professional achievements and contributions to SRNL and the nation,” laboratory director Vahid Majidi said in a recent press release. “This is our second year conducting our fellow’s program and we believe we identified two of the best to recognize with this honor.”
Both scientists have been serving at Savannah River National Laboratory for more than 30 years.
Klein is recognized across DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration as an expert in tritium process technology while Villa-Aleman leads the Laser Spectroscopy Laboratory for the characterization of materials and processes, according to the release.
“The laboratory fellow achievement is the highest recognition SRNL gives to its top researchers and engineers,” said Paul Cloessner, laboratory fellow and SRNL Fellow Committee chair.
To receive the honor, SRNL employees must first be nominated and then recommended by the Fellow Committee and Review Panel to the laboratory director, who ultimately bestows the title, according to the release.
Savannah River National Laboratory is a DOE multi-program research and development center now run for the department by Battelle Savannah River Alliance, a contractor team made up of Battelle and several universities in South Carolina and Georgia.
Responders at the Nevada National Security Site have completely contained the wildfires that broke out there last week in the site’s western region at Area 16, Area 29 and Area 30, the site said this week.
The total estimated burn area was about 275 acres, according to a Tuesday press release from site management and operations contractor, the Honeywell-led Mission Support and Test Services. That’s less than one one-hundredth of a percent of the site’s total area. The Nevada National Security Site (NNSA) is a little larger than Rhode Island.
NNSS and the Bureau of Land Management quickly got the fire in Area 30 under control and had, by July 2, mostly contained the fires in Area 16 and Area 29, Someone first spotted smoke from the fires on June 29, NNSS said.
Area 16 hosted six nuclear tests while area 30 hosted one. There were no tests at area 29, according to DOE records. Most of the scorched acreage from the recent fires was in area 16, NNSS said last week.
Last week’s wildfires followed by a few weeks the much larger Cherrywood fire that burned for about a month at the test site, crossing over some 35,000 acres. The Cherrywood fire burned over contaminated areas but did not ultimately pose any risk to the public outside the site, NNSS said. The site said the recent fires in Area 16, Area 29 and Area 30 posed no outside risk, either.
While no fires have been reported yet this season at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Leidos-led contractor team that provides the fire station at the DOE site lists the danger of a blaze as “extreme.” The National Weather Service expects weekend high temperatures around Hanford to once again reach triple digits.
A federal magistrate judge set an Aug. 4 discovery hearing in a lawsuit about alleged radioactive contamination by current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio’s Thursday action will help determine what documentation Ursula McGlone and other plaintiffs living within seven miles of the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant can expect from Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and the other federal contractors in the case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers is handling most pre-trial motions for chief U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley.
McGlone and other plaintiffs claim the Portsmouth Site contractors failed to keep contamination from spreading beyond the fence and reaching the campus of Zahn’s Corner Middle School, which closed in May 2019 after an analysis from Northern Arizona University found enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at the school.
In recent court filings, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the defendant companies have been reluctant to provide much documentation beyond their contracts.
The plaintiff attorneys say they are looking to find out the extent of off-site contamination, the cause, whether the contamination was preventable and what attempts the contractors made to avoid release of contaminants. The defendants say these discovery requests are too broad and should be more specific about the type of documents sought. Defense lawyers also say plaintiffs waited too long to file litigation against certain contractors.
The DOE has said the contaminants found at the middle school were far too little to pose any risk to human health. Nevertheless, the DOE has appointed a special liaison, Candice Robertson, a senior aide to deputy secretary of energy David Turk, to deal with Portsmouth stakeholders about contamination and ongoing demolition of the X-326 Process Building at Portsmouth.
