EM headquarters and field office leaders gathered for a one-day workshop to examine the various contractor oversight programs in place across the EM complex.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM’s senior leaders recently met at the Hanford Site to discuss ways to strengthen how EM oversees the work of its cleanup contractors.
Leaders from EM headquarters and field offices attended the one-day workshop led by EM’s Assistant Secretary Monica Regalbuto and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Whitney and hosted by EM's Richland Operations Office. The workshop was intended to provide EM leadership an opportunity to examine and discuss the various contractor oversight programs in place across the EM complex.
The idea for the workshop came out of discussions of the lessons learned from the investigations into the 2014 haul truck fire and radiological incident at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The workshop involved six modules, developed with input from senior EM headquarters management and field office managers, to help facilitate discussion.
EM had “the best of the best around the complex” provide input in the development of the modules, Wyka said.
The modules covered topics such as:
Improving the effectiveness and consistency of existing oversight mechanisms;
Key tools available to assess and improve oversight programs;
Metrics to track and improve oversight performance;
Ensuring adequate oversight resources are available and maintained;
Authorization basis alignment; and
Organizational safety culture.
Going forward, EM staff will address common areas of concern, including:
Reinvigorating oversight resources, such as EM’s facility representatives, safety system oversight personnel, and other subject-matter experts with critical roles in oversight programs;
Clarifying elements and expectations of an effective EM oversight model, especially in the areas of evaluating the effectiveness of the site contractor assurance systems (CASs); and determining the right balance of federal oversight based on the condition of the CASs;
Improving management assessments across the EM complex;
Assessing safety culture at EM sites; and
Strengthening the performance evaluation and measurement plans used to help assess contractor performance.
Publication of the Final GTCC EIS brings the Department a step closer to disposing of GTCC low-level radioactive waste, whose radionuclide concentrations exceed the limits for Class C low-level radioactive waste provided in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation 10 CFR 61.55 and for GTCC-like waste, which has similar characteristics to GTCC but is owned or generated by DOE.
The combined inventory of GTCC low-level radioactive waste and GTCC-like waste has a packaged volume of 12,000 cubic meters, enough to cover a football field up to 7.1 feet high. GTCC low-level radioactive waste types include activated metals from commercial nuclear power plants; sealed sources used in hospitals and universities; and other waste from environmental cleanup activities at EM’s West Valley Demonstration Project site in New York state.
The Final EIS identified a preferred alternative of disposal at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant geologic repository in New Mexico and/or land disposal at generic commercial facilities.
Theresa Kliczewski, environmental protection specialist in EM’s Office of Disposition Planning and Policy, explains the GTCC EIS path forward to participants in the Waste Management Symposia 2016 in Phoenix.
The next step is for DOE to submit a report to Congress as required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which stipulates the report must include all alternatives under consideration for disposal of GTCC low-level radioactive waste. DOE must then await congressional action, and only then can the Department issue a record of decision of which disposal alternative to implement.
Efforts to develop a disposal strategy for GTCC low-level radioactive waste date to 1985, when Congress passed the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act, which specifies that the federal government is responsible for the disposal of GTCC low-level radioactive waste.
Managing the EIS for GTCC low-level radioactive waste has been a labor of love for several generations of EM personnel, including some who have retired. Theresa Kliczewski, environmental protection specialist in the Office of Disposition Planning and Policy, counts herself the fifth in a line of GTCC EIS document managers. Kliczewski has worked on GTCC since 2011.
"Completion of this Final GTCC EIS has been a long time coming and I am excited we can finally mark this as an accomplishment. A lot of hard work and effort went into developing this document. As part of next steps, I am currently developing the GTCC Report to Congress," she said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Christine Gelles, an EM executive whose work contributed to a range of waste management accomplishments over more than 20 years at DOE, departs this month for a position in the private sector. Gelles will become corporate vice president and chief strategy officer at the energy and environmental consulting firm Longenecker and Associates.
The job shift takes Gelles, a Pennsylvania native, away from DOE for the first time since she joined the Department in 1993 as a budget analyst in the Office of Chief Financial Officer.
Working her way up over two decades, most recently she has served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Waste Management, a post whose portfolio includes policy and resources for EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Los Alamos and Idaho cleanup sites, and small sites under the EM umbrella.
With a bachelor’s degree in English from Mount St. Mary’s College, Gelles joined DOE as the Department actively recruited liberal arts majors to work alongside scientists and engineers, translating their technical work into products that could be more easily communicated to stakeholders and the public.
"I just enjoyed learning things and acquiring as much expertise as I could,” Gelles recalled. “We didn’t have the pervasive World Wide Web at the time. We didn’t even have email when I joined. I think we were just starting to get it. We certainly didn’t have (Microsoft) Office. Our secretaries typed on carbon paper, for real.”
Christine Gelles leaves EM this month for a position in the private sector.
In 1999, she joined the Rocky Flats Project Office within EM in a program analyst job she said remains her most rewarding experience.
“Supporting the closure of Rocky Flats still stands out as the absolute highlight,” she said. “We were doing something innovative in contract space. We were doing something innovative in project management space. It was a wonderful example of a partnership between headquarters and the field. I was one on a team of people who were solving first-of-a-kind problems together.”
Gelles said leaving EM is difficult.
“It’s the hardest decision I ever had to make,” she said. “I appreciate the opportunities I've had throughout the years to work with amazing people who are highly skilled and committed to the program's progress. I have a tremendous love and loyalty for this program. I think what we do is so important.”
Workers connect the power supply and instrumentation in AP-02A.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM’s Office of River Protection (ORP) and tank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) began retrieving waste from underground double-shell tank AY-102 this month, ahead of schedule, meeting requirements of a settlement agreement with the State of Washington.
AY-102 contained about 749,000 gallons of mixed radioactive and chemical waste. About 550,000 gallons of the tank’s liquid waste — called supernate — has been retrieved and transferred to double-shell tank AW-105 as of March 9.
Workers on the AY-102 Recovery Project install transfer lines to connect process equipment, such as the slurry pump, sluicers, and water distribution skid, to the waste transfer route.
Prior to retrieval, AY-102 contained about 594,000 gallons of supernate, and 151,000 gallons of sludge. Sludge retrieval will start using two sluicing nozzles, which spray liquid to break up the sludge so it can be pumped to double-shell tank AP-102.
AY-102 is located in the AY Farm and has a capacity of approximately 1 million gallons. It was the first of 28 double-shell tanks constructed at Hanford, and was declared operational in 1971.
Workers perform in-service leak tests in central pump pit AP-02A with water to verify the piping, jumpers, and valves are leak-tight prior to waste transfer operations. Waste retrieved from AY-102 will be transferred to AP-102.
In 2012, a small amount of waste was discovered leaking from the primary shell into the annulus, the space between the inner and outer shells. An estimated 50 to 70 gallons of waste has leaked into the annulus. Extensive monitoring shows no indication any waste has leaked to the environment.
In September 2014, ORP and WRPS signed the agreement with the state, creating a path forward to remove the waste from AY-102. The agreement requires DOE to complete waste retrieval no later than March 4, 2017.
Workers excavate for the Effluent Management Facility site at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM’s Office of River Protection’s (ORP) Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) program is moving forward after a mid-December groundbreaking of the Effluent Management Facility (EMF) site at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), and completion of its 30-percent design.
The EMF will treat liquid effluent from the WTP Low-Activity Waste Facility (LAW), which will be used to begin treating Hanford’s tank waste as soon as 2022.
ORP is responsible for management, treatment, and disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of nuclear and chemical waste contained in Hanford’s underground single- and double-shell tanks. The DFLAW program is intended to allow ORP to begin vitrifying these wastes as soon as 2022. In vitrification, radioactive liquid waste is mixed with glass-forming materials, heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured into stainless steel containers, where it cools to a solid glass form that will facilitate long-term storage.
The EMF will provide four major functions for DFLAW: serve as a low-point drain for waste transfer line flushing; concentrate fluids containing low levels of radioactive material from the low-activity waste off-gas treatment system via an evaporator; transport the condensate from the evaporator to the off-site Effluent Treatment Facility via existing transport piping; and recycle the evaporator concentrate into the low-activity waste vitrification process.
When the liquid effluent arrives at the EMF from LAW, it will be routed to an evaporator. The evaporator will concentrate the effluent and remove less contaminated fluids, which are then routed to the Effluent Treatment Facility, located about a mile north of WTP. The remaining, more contaminated concentrate is returned to LAW for vitrification.
“The Effluent Management Facility is critical for WTP to support DFLAW,” explained Jason Young, federal project director for the WTP balance of facilities and Analytical Laboratory.
Design and construction of the EMF will continue under a “design-build” approach with design reviews at the 60- and 90-percent design marks. Work on getting the facility’s permits from the Washington State Department of Ecology will also start this year.
“Right now it’s progressing well,” Young said about the facility. “Construction and design are on schedule, and we are looking for opportunities to improve schedule where possible.”
The U.K. NDA delegation visited Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility earlier this year. From left to right: John Owens, Savannah River Remediation (SRR); Benjamin Rivera, EM Headquarters International Programs; George Matis, SRR; John Clarke, NDA; Jack Craig, DOE Savannah River Site; Pete Lutwyche, NDA Sellafield; and Laurie Judd, Longenecker & Associates.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Several nuclear related entities from the United Kingdom have become a familiar presence at EM’s headquarters and field offices in recent months, thanks to a growing partnership that promotes information sharing.
The rise in visits stems from the success of the Statement of Intent (SOI) between DOE, NDA, and NNL. The SOI has led to a joint effort that encourages information exchanging among these organizations charged with implementing safe, cost-effective, and rapid cleanup of legacy waste.
Signed in 2007, the SOI is entering its 10th year. It has allowed for successful collaboration between the U.S. and U.K. cleanup programs, which are of similar scale and complexity and benefit from leveraging operational experiences and technologies.
“The International Program strives to develop strong relationships with many partner countries to ensure that DOE is able to apply best international practice to its cleanup effort,” said Ana Han, head of EM’s international programs. “The progress with the U.K. during the past five to seven years has been extraordinary, and we look forward to developing it further as we renew the SOI for an additional five years.”
The U.K. NNL delegation is pictured with EM Office of River Protection (ORP) officials at the Waste Treatment Plant in Hanford. From left to right: Brad Eccleston, ORP; Anthony Banford, NNL; Albert Kruger, ORP; Keith Miller, NNL; Steve Thomson, NNL; and Benjamin Rivera, EM Headquarters International Programs.
Most recently, John Clarke, CEO of NDA, and Pete Lutwyche, NDA Sellafield programme director, visited EM headquarters and the Savannah River (SRS) and Hanford sites to tour major projects, including the Defense Waste and Salt Waste processing facilities and tank farms at SRS; and the Waste Treatment Plant, sludge retrieval, tank farm remediation, and deactivation and decommissioning of facilities such as the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford.
Late last year, a group from ONR, NDA, and Magnox spent two days at the Richland Operations Office to learn more about EM’s approach to the interim safe storage (ISS) of reactors and apply EM’s lessons learned to the U.K.’s ISS program.
Hix, right, discusses a work assignment with a team member.
RICHLAND, Wash. – For Gary Hix, a recent accomplishment at the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) ended a long career chapter at the Hanford Site facility.
Hix is the field work supervisor for the team that recently finished cutting up and removing the most hazardous glovebox in the PFP, glovebox HA-9A, performing some of the most hazardous work across the DOE complex.
That glovebox, and a similar one the crew removed, were each about two stories tall and highly contaminated with radiological and chemical hazards. They are among the many components the PFP workforce is removing to prepare the plant for demolition.
Hix’s crew started work on HA-9A in October 2015, but his experience with the glovebox dates to 2004, when he was a nuclear chemical operator. The mission at PFP was to remove process equipment, in this case, mechanics inside the gloveboxes once used to process plutonium. Hix said he chose the A-Line, one of two former production lines at PFP.
“No one wanted to go in there. It was a challenge,” he said.
The crew that cut up and removed the two most hazardous gloveboxes in PFP.
And it was a challenge. Shut down since the mid-1970s, clear ports that allowed workers to see through from the outside were blackened, due to exposure to radiation and chemicals. Workers relied on each other to tell how and where to move their hands because they couldn’t see through the darkened ports.
“Imagine changing your oil in your car or changing your car tire, blindfolded, relying on someone else to tell you where to move your hand or where to move the wrench,” Hix said.
The team he was on removed components from two of three levels of HA-9A in 2004. Subsequent teams removed the remaining components, leaving the glovebox in the condition Hix and his team would find it in 2015.
During that time, Hix had the opportunity to become upgraded from a bargaining unit employee to a field work supervisor. In late 2015, he nearly left PFP for another opportunity, but chose to stay in a leadership role.
“It’s almost home to me. It’s become part of my life. Having been here since 2000, I want to see the end of it,” he said.
Due to the airborne radiological contamination encountered while cutting apart the glovebox, workers wore protective suits and breathed supplied air for the task. Workers cut the glovebox into pieces and removed the pieces, working from the top of the glovebox down to the floor.
Hix credits his current team for its recent work in cutting apart and removing the same glovebox he worked on more than 10 years ago.
“This group, more than any other group that I’ve worked with, has been more involved in finding ways to be successful. Between the operators and the radiological control technicians on our team, we all want to help, and we all want to find the answers,” he said.
Hix and his team will remove ventilation components, then start a new chapter at PFP as they move onto another hazardous area of the facility to prepare chemical tanks and pipes for removal before or during demolition. Other crews at PFP are removing contaminated ventilation ductwork, removing process lines, performing decontamination, and conducting asbestos abatement, all steps necessary to prepare the facility for safe and compliant demolition.
Overpacked drums are shown before entering AMWTP’s new conveyor system. The conveyor system allows for batch processing of the retrieved, overpacked drums.
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – When industrialist Henry Ford invented the production line, he likely didn’t think it’d be used to process retrieved transuranic waste.
Some 65,000 cubic meters of waste were once stored at the site, but crews are now retrieving a final cell where approximately 1,400 cubic meters of waste remain in the form of severely degraded metal drums and wood boxes stored under an earthen berm for nearly half a century.
In retrieval, workers use a forklift to secure the containers, survey them for radiation and external contamination, overpack them based on their physical conditions, and move them to a compartment known as an airlock, where they receive tracking labels. The next stop is AMWTP’s characterization facility.
It's a process that has been repeated tens of thousands of times. But being able to safely move the older degraded drums to the airlock became more difficult as the area containing the drums and boxes receded. Working in close proximity to coworkers, the forklift operators maneuvered the drums, some weighing more than 750 pounds, several hundred feet over a rough surface while kicking up dust.
An employee reviews radiological survey information for overpacked drums leaving the retrieval contamination enclosure through the airlock. The conveyor system allows for processing numerous drums at once.
The conveyor system was built to expand from the airlock into the retrieval area, thus reducing forklift travel and handling. Operations now take place closer to the area containing the drums and boxes, reducing forklift travel distance and improving safety and efficiency. The retrieval rate increases as batches of containers exit the retrieval area in a controlled manner.
With the survey and identification activities performed near the airlock, radiological control technicians and retrieval operators are stationed away from the noise, fumes, and forklifts, avoiding potential collisions.
“Instead of one drum at a time, we can now batch process drums because of the incredible efficiency resulting from the conveyor,” said LeeRoy Jones, retrieval and cargo lead. “If there’s a metric for the conveyor system, it’s definitely happy operators who can focus on their work in a safe, secure, area.”
With the innovation of the conveyor system and introduction of another shift in retrieval operations, crews anticipate completing retrieval work by late 2016. But most important, it’s work being performed in a safer, compliant, and more productive environment, Jones said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A DOE Fellow who cut her teeth conducting research for EM into soil and groundwater remediation at the Savannah River Site (SRS) has been awarded a prestigious internship at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Christine Wipfli departs for Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, this month. She will spend the next year as a technical document editor and website contributor in the agency’s Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle & Waste Technology.
Wipfli’s current project at SRS, under the guidance of faculty researchers, involves investigating the potential use of sodium silicate as a technique to immobilize uranium contamination in soil and groundwater.
As part of the DOE Fellows program, Wipfli was awarded a 10-week internship at EM headquarters in summer 2015, and was assigned to the Office of Soil & Groundwater Remediation. She traveled to SRS to view the area where FIU was conducting its research, as well as the Hanford Site. The visits provided her with knowledge of DOE national laboratory capabilities and a chance to work with national laboratory principal investigators.
“During my internship I was able to get exposure to a lot of different areas of DOE-EM specific to the soil and groundwater remediation initiatives around the country,” Wipfli said. “I was also able to get valuable insight into the project management side of the organization.”
Kurt Gerdes, director of the Office of Soil & Groundwater Remediation, said it was a pleasure to have Wipfli work with his team.
“If you owned your own company, you would want all of your employees to have the drive that Christine personifies,” he said.
“The mentorship she received over the summer at DOE headquarters, I think helped her in obtaining this opportunity, as well as built on what she’s done here in the DOE Fellows Program,” said Dr. Leonel Lagos, director of research at the ARC, principal investigator for the DOE-FIU Cooperative Agreement, and director of the DOE Fellows program at FIU.
Christine Wipfli heads to Vienna for an IAEA internship.
ARC provides technical research support to EM in environmental remediation and student workforce development for high-priority areas such as radioactive waste processing and facility deactivation and decommissioning. The DOE Fellows' research efforts fall under a five-year cooperative agreement between EM and FIU that has allowed the university to develop expertise and specialized facilities through its dedicated scientific and engineering work, which is aligned with EM’s mission to accelerate risk reduction and site cleanup.
Working at the IAEA will enable Wipfli to continue to broaden her horizons.
“With DOE EM focusing primarily on addressing environmental clean-up issues in the U.S., I am very eager to see the management of environmental issues on a global scale. To see this extra layer of complexity to environmental remediation is going to be interesting,” she said.
“They not only have to deal with the challenges of environmental remediation but additionally issues relating to international relations, social issues, political-cultural conflicts and different political agendas that influence their ability to remediate certain environmental areas,” she said. “So I am very excited to get this kind of exposure. I’m very humbled and honored to be selected for this opportunity and I am really looking forward to taking it all in and learning as much as I can while I am there.”
A native of Milwaukee, Wipfli obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications studies with a minor in Spanish from Cardinal Stritch University. Afterwards, she moved to Brazil and began working for an online news website, based out of Rio de Janeiro. While writing news articles on environmental issues in that country, she eventually became motivated to take a more proactive approach towards the environment than just writing about it.
“My hope is that with this internship at the IAEA, I will be able to use my skills and experience towards this effort by contributing to the agency’s mission of making a positive impact on the world,” she said.
De Rienzo prepares to work on a helicopter while serving in the U.S. Air Force.
AIKEN, S.C. – Francesca De Rienzo wanted to earn money for college and travel the world after high school.
With art classes and set-building experience, she pursued her ideal job: aircraft structural maintenance, which includes metal work and painting on aircraft, with the U.S. Air Force.
De Rienzo is now a U.S. veteran and an assistant cost and scheduling specialist with Savannah River Remediation (SRR), EM’s liquid waste contractor at the Savannah River Site.
“After leaving Pennsylvania, where I grew up, I traveled to South Carolina and from there went to South Korea, Japan, England, and Africa,” De Rienzo said. “I worked on F-16s, F-15s, C130s, and helicopters, and I embraced the adventures of military life and the beauty unique to each place I went, as well as the people that I met.”
In Japan, she met her future husband. After returning to the U.S., the couple moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she enrolled at Augusta University.
De Rienzo, a Savannah River Remediation employee, today.
On campus, De Rienzo heard good things about part-time employment at SRR through the Veteran Cooperative Program, an educational program providing qualifying veterans part-time paid developmental jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM fields relating to their degree of study.
De Rienzo applied and felt at ease during her interview with the panel of military veterans at SRR. She was hired as an administrative assistant in the project management group.
“Everyone at SRR is so friendly, always saying hello with a smile and showing a genuine interest in me,” De Rienzo said. “I grew as a person during my summer intern experience because everyone invested in me and believed in me.”
De Rienzo was the first to graduate from the Veteran Cooperative Program, and she earned her degree in business management from Augusta University in December 2015. She became a full-time SRR employee this year.
"While in the Air Force, I also worked in the tool crib, ordered supplies for various repairs, and evaluated contractor work and military flight line maintenance, in addition to my own fabrication maintenance,” De Rienzo said. “Little did I know all the experience I received in all these areas would serve as a tremendous stepping stone for the work I do here at SRR.”
Portsmouth Site Director Dr. Vince Adams (left) presents U.S. Army Major Ryan Watson with a framed photo of the Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Project. In the foreground from left are EM Federal Project Director Jud Lilly, Adams, Watson, and Fluor-BWXT Site Project Director Dennis Carr.
The Army unit requested the visit after the battalion training officer heard about the site’s successful public tour program. The citizen-soldiers of the 412th battalion, based in Columbus, are Army Reservists who come together monthly to participate in training to prepare them for any possibility during world-wide deployment. Training encompasses a wide range of functions from support for civil authorities to economic development, to humanitarian assistance.
“We were very eager and proud to host this group of soldiers,” EM Site Director Dr. Vincent Adams said.
Following the welcome, Adams and Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) Federal Project Director Jud Lilly provided an overview of the site, including a site history, details on how the gaseous diffusion process worked, scope of the D&D project, and stakeholders’ vision for the future.
“I could tell the group was really interested because they asked a lot of good questions, not just about the D&D but how the site was built and how quickly it went into operations,” Adams said. “We have a shared respect for the determination it took to build a plant of this magnitude and get it operating.”
Fluor-BWXT’s Dennis Carr and EM’s Jud Lilly explain the purpose of the X-326 facility while it operated and the current activities to safely remove the process gas equipment.
Battalion Commander Maj. Ryan Watson said civil affairs soldiers care and have experience regarding how facilities are built, operate, and how this D&D site will improve the future.
“Helping bridge and repair communities is what we do around the world. It is great to see the efforts that the plant team puts into fruition and completion of your projects. The end result is win-win for the community,” he said.
“It was a real learning event for our soldiers to see the complex and important work the plant has accomplished in the past, and safe and ethical completion of your current projects in the future. Your efforts mirror what our citizen-soldiers do in Army civil affairs,” Watson said.
Adams added: “I think this visit really opened up an opportunity for dialogue and sharing best practices. If we can help these young soldiers by sharing our experience, what a positive impact that would be, for both of us.”