EM Update | Vol. 10, Issue 45 | Nov. 13, 2018

• Post-Retrieval Activities Changing Hanford Tank Farm Footprint
• Assistant Secretary White Connects With EM Early Career Professionals
• Summit Provides Forum to Discuss Safety of SRS Liquid Waste Cleanup
• Massive Fans to Boost Airflow in WIPP Underground
• Hanford’s WTP Receives Specialized Crane for High-Level Waste Facility
• SRS Facility Celebrates 35th Anniversary Since Groundbreaking
• Community Leaders Tour 324 Building Mock-up at Hanford
• American Chemical Society Designates SRS Historic Landmark
• STEM Like ME! Program Introduces Students to Hanford Careers
• Crews Tower Over Hanford to Improve Site's Wireless Services

Post-Retrieval Activities Changing Hanford Tank Farm Footprint

RICHLAND, Wash. – A comparison of aerial photos of Hanford’s C Tank Farm highlights the significant progress by EM’s Office of River Protection (ORP) and tank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) to dismantle site infrastructure following the completion of retrieval operations.

   Retrieval operations concluded in November 2017. This past September, WRPS completed the project to put the tank farm in a surveillance and maintenance mode until a tank closure plan is determined.

   Jeff Rambo, ORP project manager for single-shell tank retrievals, noted that detailed planning, strong communication and collaboration, and a workforce committed to safety were key to the successful execution of the work daily.

   “All of the crews should be proud that they left a safer working environment for surveillance and maintenance activities until tank farm closure activities begin,” Rambo said.

   WRPS project manager Garth Stowe said his team removed everything that would require significant maintenance or could be hazardous to crews performing rounds and routines.

   “We disconnected over 70 electrical skids, 31 hydraulic power units and manifolds, and 14 water systems that were used during retrieval operations,” Stowe said. “We also removed camera systems, heating structures, leak-detection monitoring equipment, control trailer signal cables, excess scaffolding, hose barns, and concrete jersey barriers.”

   Retrieval efforts in tank C-105 wrapped up in November 2017. C-105 was the last of the farm’s 16 tanks to be retrieved. During retrieval operations, nearly 1.8 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste was transferred from C Farm to double-shell tanks for safe storage until it can be treated at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.

-Contributor: Mark McKenna

Back to Top

Assistant Secretary White Connects With EM Early Career Professionals

WASHINGTON D.C. – EM Assistant Secretary Anne White joined EM early career professionals for lunch Nov. 8 at DOE headquarters. The 10 employees — who included Rosa Elmetti, Genia McKinley, Jomaries Rovira, Junita Turner, Bill Ostrum, Cyrus Nezhad, Ty Sanders, Emily Orler, Jean Pablo (JP) Pabón, and Lisa Phillips — talked about their roles in the cleanup program and shared ideas with White, second from right, on improving work processes and producing efficiencies. “This is great, getting to spend some time with you,” White told the headquarters employees. “It’s important to me that you guys feel empowered and enabled, think critically, and make decisions.”

-Contributor: David Sheeley

Back to Top

Summit Provides Forum to Discuss Safety of SRS Liquid Waste Cleanup

EVANS, Ga. – The safety challenges and successes of EM’s liquid waste cleanup mission at the Savannah River Site (SRS) were among the key themes of a recent event attended by DOE representatives and site contractors.

   Nuclear industry representatives shared safety topics with participants at the first-ever Savannah River Safety Summit. The event was sponsored by the Energy Technology & Environmental Business Association and Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness.

   Many DOE representatives attended the summit, including DOE Associate Under Secretary for Environment, Health, Safety and Security Matthew Moury.

   “I am passionate about safety, and I believe it starts with supporting our community’s efforts to work, play, and live safer as our top priority,” Moury said.

Savannah River Remediation Salt Waste Processing Facility Integration Program Manager Keith Harp, right, explains the automatic welding system to an attendee at the Savannah River Safety Summit.

DOE Associate Under Secretary for Environment, Health, Safety and Security Matthew Moury speaks at the Savannah River Safety Summit.

   In between panel discussions and keynote addresses, attendees visited a safety expo with exhibits by SRS contractors AECOM, Jacobs, BWX Technologies, Atkins, and Savannah River Remediation (SRR), EM’s liquid waste contractor at SRS.

   SRR presented an automatic welding system for use in place of a worker in radiological areas to limit personnel exposure. The automatic welder is a cost-effective, lightweight, portable, and highly reliable tool to weld around pipes and tubing.

   SRR Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Project Manager Mark Schmitz said SRR works to think outside of the box to protect people, SRS, and the environment.

   “There is nothing routine in our line of work as the liquid waste contractor at SRS,” Schmitz said. “Safety belongs to everyone, in and around the site, and we have an uncompromising commitment to identify and mitigate hazards.”

   Four employees of SRS contractors answered questions about safety in a panel discussion. SRR Electrical and Instrumentation Mechanic Tyler Stuart said it is comforting to know SRR has safety procedures for all jobs at SRS.

   “The safety culture at SRS helps us all develop habits that become second nature, like the 360-degree vehicle walkarounds that are performed before anyone operates a government vehicle,” Stuart said. "I conduct these walkarounds on- and offsite to ensure there are no obstacles in my blind spots. While our priorities may change, safety does not.”

-Contributor: Ashley Dernberger

Back to Top

Massive Fans to Boost Airflow in WIPP Underground

CARLSBAD, N.M. – If you’re a fan of fans, a new ventilation system at EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will blow you away.

   Six enormous fans are integral to WIPP’s new $288 million Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, which will significantly increase the amount of air in the underground portion of the WIPP facility.

   The system will provide about 540,000 cubic feet of air per minute to the WIPP underground, significantly more than the nearly 170,000 cubic feet of air per minute of the facility’s current ventilation system. Each fan will stand 20 feet tall and weigh 44,000 pounds. The units will generate over three-fourths more power than the existing system’s fans.

A rendering of one of six fans that are part of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's new ventilation system. 

   The Encorus Group of New York is building the fans. Tom Gilmartin, the company’s lead engineer for the project, said the operation will be the largest containment fan system in the DOE complex.

   The WIPP repository is mined out of a salt bed 2,150 feet underground. The fans will pull air through a salt-reduction facility to remove salt from the air that would otherwise build up on the system’s high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. The system is designed to run continuously in HEPA filtration.

   Crews broke ground for the system this past summer. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2021.

   WIPP was constructed for disposal of defense-generated transuranic waste from DOE sites. The waste consists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris, soil, and other items contaminated with small amounts of plutonium and other manmade radioactive elements.

-Contributor: Roy Neese

Back to Top

Hanford’s WTP Receives Specialized Crane for High-Level Waste Facility

RICHLAND, Wash. – Components for a specialized 60-ton-capacity crane were delivered to Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) earlier this month. The crane was delivered in three shipments due to its size. When fully assembled and installed, the overhead bridge crane will become the High-Level Waste (HLW) Facility’s primary cask-handling crane. During HLW vitrification, stainless steel canisters will be filled with vitrified tank waste before being placed inside an overpack shell, or cask, for radiological shielding. The crane is designed to lift empty transport casks and move them into the HLW Facility. Inside the facility, a different crane will load filled canisters into the transport casks. The cask-handling crane will then safely lift the filled casks onto a transport trailer where final radiological surveys will be performed. The crane delivery is part of the HLW Facility design and purchasing work being done by EM Office of River Protection contractor Bechtel National Inc.

-Contributor: George Rangel

Back to Top

SRS Facility Celebrates 35th Anniversary Since Groundbreaking

Savannah River Remediation Melter Engineers John Owen, left, and Dan Iverson currently work at the Savannah River Site's (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). They attended the groundbreaking for the facility as SRS employees in 1983.

AIKEN, S.C. – In November 1983, crews broke ground for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), the largest vitrification facility in the U.S.

   Now in its 35th year since the groundbreaking, the facility immobilizes sludge waste stored in the Savannah River Site (SRS) liquid waste tanks by combining it with borosilicate glass. The mixture is then poured into 10-foot-tall stainless steel canisters.

   Before DWPF was built, a pilot facility was designed and constructed to demonstrate the project’s viability. That facility tested new remote operation concepts, like pouring glass into the canisters and decontaminating and welding the canisters.

   The attitude at the site was extremely positive toward the new project, according to John Owen, who has worked at SRS since 1977. At the time, the site was called the Savannah River Plant, operated by the company DuPont.

   “DWPF was the first large project at the site since original construction,” said Owen, who has worked in DWPF Melter Engineering since 1992. “The DuPont company position was that the site could continue to build additional waste tanks or use those resources instead to start making room for future waste generation by emptying waste tanks and stabilizing that waste.”

The Defense Waste Processing Facility groundbreaking in 1983. From left, DuPont President Crawford Greenewalt, U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick, South Carolina Gov. Richard Riley, DuPont Chairman and CEO Ed Jefferson, Strom Thurmond, Jr., standing in for his father, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, and Secretary of Energy Donald P. Hodel.

   Local, state, and federal officials, dignitaries, and site employees were among the more than 1,000 people attending the DWPF groundbreaking. The event featured displays depicting new technology being developed for the facility’s mission, including the melter, known as the heart of DWPF. The melter heats the waste-glass mixture to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, achieving the vitrification process.

   “Waste vitrification had been pursued in other countries. However, those processes were very different from the vitrification process developed for DWPF,” said Dan Iverson, a melter engineer who attended the DWPF groundbreaking and had operated a small-scale pilot melter. “It is exciting to see a complex and remotely operated process in successful operation for so many years.”

   Since DWPF began operating in March 1996, it has poured over 16 million pounds of glass and filled over 4,100 canisters. The current SRS liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) has operated DWPF since July 2009. SRR is responsible for processing over 6 million pounds of glass and pouring more than 1,400 canisters.

   Jim Folk, DOE-Savannah River Assistant Manager for Waste Disposition, said SRS has come a long way since the DWPF groundbreaking and is making great progress at dispositioning radioactive liquid waste.

   “The mission at SRS began with developing nuclear materials for national defense,” Folk said. “The waste generated as a byproduct is being remediated, which started and continues with DWPF. Eight of the 51 waste tanks are operationally closed, and we continue to develop and implement technology to disposition the high-level waste at SRS.”

-Contributor: Ashley Dernberger

Back to Top

Community Leaders Tour 324 Building Mock-up at Hanford

Mike Douglas, deputy vice president of the CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company 324 Building Disposition Project, explains to Hanford Communities members how the mock-up helped identify and resolve issues prior to equipment installation at the 324 Building.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Leaders from the communities near the Hanford Site recently visited a mock-up where workers test and train on equipment that will remotely remove radioactive soil from beneath the hot cells of the 324 Building, a former chemical laboratory near the Columbia River and city of Richland.

   “It’s a tremendous opportunity to help educate the community leaders who play an important role in Hanford Site cleanup,” said Mike Douglas, deputy vice president of EM Richland Operations Office (RL) contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company’s (CHPRC) 324 Building Disposition Project.

   This video helps illustrate the complex work underway at the mock-up and 324 Building.

Richland Operations Office employees give Hanford Communities members a tour of the mock-up, which is intended to increase safety and worker confidence, providing employees with the opportunity to work in a non-hazardous environment.

Members of Hanford Communities gather at the 324 Building Disposition Project mock-up.

   The leaders who visited the mock-up are from Hanford Communities, which represents Benton and Franklin counties and the four cities home to nearly all of Hanford’s workforce: Richland, Pasco, Kennewick, and West Richland. The organization’s members provide advice and support to RL on cleanup issues.

   Removal of the soil and the eventual demolition of the 324 Building is a top priority for RL and contractor CHPRC, and members of the public that Hanford Communities supports.

   “Completing this project is very important, and it was great to see the progress toward safe soil removal to keep the public safe,” said Pam Larsen Brown, executive director of Hanford Communities.

-Contributor: Jennifer Copeland

Back to Top

American Chemical Society Designates SRS Historic Landmark

Mike Budney, manager of DOE’s Savannah River Site Operations Office, accepts a commemorative plaque recognizing the Savannah River Site’s role in the production, separation, and supply of plutonium-238.

AIKEN, S.C. – The world’s largest scientific membership society recently designated the Savannah River Site (SRS) as one of the nation’s “National Historic Chemical Landmarks.”

   The American Chemical Society (ACS) recognized the site’s role in the production, separation, and supply of plutonium-238 (Pu-238), which was used to power NASA’s unmanned, deep space exploration craft for more than four decades. SRS was the first site of industrial-scale separation of Pu-238, which occurred from 1960 through 1988.

   In a ceremony earlier this month, SRS Manager Mike Budney accepted a commemorative bronze plaque from ACS President Peter K. Dorhout. The event took place in conjunction with an ACS regional meeting hosted by the society’s Savannah River section.

   SRS is the first landmark designated by ACS in South Carolina.

   “This is humbling and an honor,” Budney said. “To see the Savannah River Site on a short list with the likes of Thomas Edison and Joseph Priestly is pretty special. Many people dedicated their working lives to programs like Pu-238 production at the Savannah River Site. They were never really able to tell their family or friends what they did. I hope this designation allows them to finally say, ‘We did that.’ Forty years later their ideas and processes are still being used to help us explore the bounds of space — a true testament to its historical significance.”

   In 1960, production of Pu-238 began at SRS through a process developed at the site. The site’s H Area facilities were used to separate neptunium-237 (Np-237) from irradiated enriched uranium, and, ultimately, to separate and purify Pu-238 from the irradiated Np-237 target material.

   Pu-238 has been used as heat source material for radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), the “nuclear batteries” that powered early satellites, NASA’s Apollo lunar craft, and deep space probes such as Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini, and New Horizons. Those probes made the U.S. the first nation to reach every planet in the solar system with a space probe. The RTGs function by converting the decay heat of the radioactive material into electrical energy.

   “As someone who has worked with plutonium in order to better understand its fundamental structures and properties, I appreciate the difficulties that the scientists at SRS faced,” said Peter Dorhout, ACS president and vice president for research at Kansas State University. “Learning new chemistry and developing industrial-scale production of plutonium-238 was critical to the success of this program, and ACS recognizes those fundamental advances to improve our exploration of the universe.”

   Since 1992, ACS has granted landmark status to seminal achievements in the history of chemical sciences, including the world’s first synthetic plastic and the discovery and development of penicillin.

-Contributor: Will Callicott

Back to Top

STEM Like ME! Program Introduces Students to Hanford Careers

Middle school students use scientific methods to characterize items in soil during a STEM Like Me! session with Hanford Site workers.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Work is underway to equip the next generation of the workforce with technical skills to continue safe cleanup of the Hanford Site.

   EM Richland Operations Office (RL) contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) is bringing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills to local middle school students through a program called STEM Like ME!, together with the Washington State STEM Education Foundation.

   CHPRC’s participation in STEM Like ME! is part of the contractor’s commitment to promote opportunities in the local community for bringing the next generation of workers to Hanford and enhancing the quality of life and diversity in the community.

CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company mentor Maple Lee demonstrates the limits of a rotary corded phone during a “Technology Over Time” module.

Students use circuit boards to learn to follow instructions in a STEM Like ME! activity with mentor Tonya Bean, an industrial hygienist from the Hanford Site.

   STEM Like ME! creates a setting for middle school students to participate in hands-on activities with mentors working in fields closely tied to STEM careers. CHPRC employees mentor students on technology development, electricity, communication, waste characterization, and other topics to create excitement about STEM fields and related careers at Hanford.

   In the last year, 28 mentors from CHPRC worked with more than 600 seventh- and eighth-graders on STEM activities.

   “CHPRC jumped in full force and added to the program by designing and piloting a company-driven model for the STEM Like ME! program that is now an example for other contractors and businesses across the state to follow,” said Deb Bowen, executive director for the Washington State STEM Education Foundation and the Mid-Columbia STEM Network.

-Contributor: Lynn Tegeler

Back to Top

Crews Tower Over Hanford to Improve Site's Wireless Services

RICHLAND, Wash. – Crews with EM Richland Operations Office contractor Mission Support Alliance recently installed eight antennas on a 400-foot meteorological tower to improve wireless services at the Hanford Site. Workers scaled the tower located at the center of the site to install the antennas close to the top of the tower. The new antennas will support wireless services in the Hanford tank farms and future remote locations needed for cleanup operations.

-Contributor: Mission Support Alliance

Back to Top

Like EM on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DOEEnvironmentalManagement