Cost Savings Grow to $1.8 Million as Two EM Sites Share Equipment; Hanford Workers Develop Innovative Tool to Safely Probe Contaminated Facility; and much more!
DOE Office of Environmental Management sent this bulletin at 01/15/2019 03:05 PM EST
A truck delivers an excavator to the West Valley Demonstration Project for EM’s use in demolition activities.
WEST VALLEY, N.Y. – Two EM sites have saved more than $1.8 million by sharing heavy-duty equipment for large demolition activities, and the savings continue to grow.
In December, workers at the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) received an excavator from the EM program at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in Niskayuna, New York. EM workers at SPRU also delivered a heavy-duty hydraulic hammer and shears to WVDP in October. EM is scheduled to receive two other excavators at WVDP within the next few weeks under the arrangement.
“Working together, these two DOE-EM sites found a way to increase cost-savings. Many times, innovation results just from thinking differently about how we conduct our business, and this is a good example. West Valley and SPRU figured that out in this case. We need to continue our efforts to enhance safety, reduce risks, and increase cost-effectiveness,” EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Mark Gilbertson said.
EM crews use a high lift to help remove a large cover off an excavator.
“Sharing equipment helps save money for taxpayers and the government, and saves cost and time on schedule because the equipment is already built, tested, and used,” said Dan Sullivan, federal project director for the Main Plant Process Building and Vitrification Facility demolitions at the WVDP. “In addition, this equipment will be onsite and ready for use during the next phase of site cleanup.”
The equipment will be used in the demolition of five ancillary structures surrounding the Main Plant Process Building and 19 other facilities at WVDP, including trailers, an old sewage treatment plant, and water and septic tanks.
"This is a collective effort by everyone involved," said Steven Feinberg, EM’s SPRU federal project director. "Cost savings and increased productivity among DOE's EM sites are the results of working together. We are glad to be a part of this initiative."
Workers inspect an excavator after it arrived at the West Valley Demonstration Project from the Separations Process Research Unit.
“Sharing equipment and lessons learned between sites is a formula for success,” said Scott Anderson, president of EM cleanup contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley. “West Valley and other DOE Environmental Management sites will continue to assist each other in reducing risks in a safe, cost effective, and environmentally compliant manner.”
Workers deploy a robotic device to safely investigate and collect data from a potentially hazardous area of a former nuclear processing facility.
RICHLAND, Wash. – Hanford Site workers developed an innovative tool to remotely explore and sample potentially hazardous areas of a former nuclear processing facility for the first time in nearly two decades.
Workers with EMRichland Operations Office (RL) contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) modified a small robotic device to safely investigate areas suspected of high radioactive contamination in the Reduction Oxidation (REDOX) facility, one of five former processing facilities in central Hanford.
The robot is equipped with instruments to detect radioactivity and radiological contamination. An attached camera allows the operator to guide the device to an area under investigation.
“DOE is encouraged by the potential of this tool,” said Bill Hamel, RL assistant manager for river and plateau cleanup. “We will use lessons learned from this project to consider possible applications of this device at similar facilities across the site.”
Personnel equipped the robot with instruments to detect radioactivity and radiological contamination.
The device identified a safe path for entry and exit of the area to help inform future cleanup efforts. Using data collected from the robot, planners will design work packages that reduce risk to workers and the environment.
“This is a great example of the ingenuity of our team in developing cost-effective solutions to improve safety and productivity,” said Tom Bratvold, CHPRC vice president for the Central Plateau Risk Management Project.
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth (FBP) supervisor Bill Bayless, left, and chemical operator Brent Copley monitor uranium hexafluoride transfer operations in support of the decontamination and decommissioning of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio. EM recently awarded fees to FBP and three other contractors for their fiscal 2018 performance.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) this week announced fiscal 2018 fees awarded to four contractors supporting cleanup of EM’s former gaseous diffusion plants in southern Ohio and west Kentucky.
Annual evaluations determine the portion of contractor fees to be paid based on performance. In determining the awards, EM considers overall performance along with completion of specific EM mission objectives.
Overall quality and effectiveness of FBP’s Portsmouth D&D contract performance for the year was “very good,” including project management and environmental safety, health, quality, and regulatory work. FBP met overall cost, schedule, and technical performance requirements, and exceeded some significant award fee criteria. The evaluation cited overall improvement in moving forward with a challenging, integrated cleanup program that includes disposal facility development and deactivation work in multiple buildings to prepare for demolition.
“During this period, FBP continued to make notable progress despite ever-increasing project complexity,” PPPO Manager Robert Edwards said.
RSI EnTech received an “excellent” rating overall, based on quality and effectiveness of environment, safety and health, quality assurance, and field support; project support; and program management.
At PPPO’s Paducah Site, FRNP delivered overall “satisfactory” performance, which included quality, schedule, cost-control, management, and regulatory compliance, and “good” implementation of business systems. The contractor exceeded some criteria, and met overall cost, schedule, and technical performance requirements.
For the DUF6 Conversion Project, MCS received a “very good” rating for quality, schedule, cost control, and regulatory compliance. The contractor received “excellent" ratings for management and utilization of small business. The evaluation noted MCS’s “one-project” management mindset that has improved communication and incorporation of lessons learned among the plant sites, along with an improved safety culture, and completion of several plant upgrades.
“MCS achieved operation of all conversion lines at both sites during the period, representing a full restart from previous safety shutdowns,” Edwards said. “The project continues toward demonstrating consistent, sustained, safe production.”
The fiscal 2018 award fee scorecards and other information about PPPO’s contracts are available here.
Operators use a robotic arm to size a tank at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project.
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – EM and its cleanup contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory Site are on a challenging Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) mission to segregate debris waste with high concentrations of radioactive isotopes for waste drums that meet criteria for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
“No other facility in the DOE complex has this type of equipment to safely and remotely open boxes of this type of waste,” Fluor Idaho AMWTP Manager Chad Jardine said. “Our operators know how to efficiently and effectively sort the material to get containers within regulatory-approved levels that can be permanently disposed of in WIPP.”
Waste management crews have so far processed 20 of the 30 waste boxes containing fissile isotopes in a large remote-operated glovebox at AMWTP.
A robotic arm opens a box, and the material is emptied into a metal trough where it is separated into smaller amounts. The segregated debris is then dropped through a port into a drum, which is size-reduced in AMWTP’s supercompactor to prepare for shipment to WIPP.
Some of the boxes have more than 10 times the amount of fissile isotopes than what is allowed at WIPP, requiring the team to repackage the material into several drums.
To prepare for this campaign, staff developed new procedures, conducted engineering and safety evaluations, drafted new radiation control requirements, and completed additional training.
Surrounded by storage tanks and injection hoses, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s subsurface imaging technology monitors the delivery of a phosphate solution for binding contaminants in the soil at the Hanford Site’s 300 Area.
RICHLAND, Wash. – At the southern tip of the sprawling Hanford Site, the soil beneath the 300 Area contains residual uranium from a handful of now-removed settling ponds and trenches that stored liquid waste from the processing of spent nuclear fuel rods.
Located about a quarter-mile west of the Columbia River shoreline, underground uranium concentrations remain high after years of plutonium production decades ago.
EM’s Richland Operations Office and its site contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) recently finished injecting a polyphosphate solution into the ground to bind with uranium through a process called sequestration, preventing the uranium from reaching the groundwater and Columbia River. Polyphosphate is like a time-release medicine — it breaks up over time. As the phosphate reacts with the uranium, it makes a rock, which is naturally occurring, and stabilizes the uranium in the soil.
A view of the tanks and hoses used at the electrical resistivity tomography site at Hanford's 300 Area.
Researchers with DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) worked with CHPRC to successfully implement a state-of-the-art approach for monitoring the delivery of the polyphosphate remediation.
The approach uses PNNL’s Real-time Four-Dimensional Subsurface Imaging Software (E4D) to take images of the vertical and lateral movement of the polyphosphate solution. E4D was developed with support from DOE and the U.S. Department of Defense and is freely available to anyone.
E4D uses electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements to reconstruct time-lapse images of the electrical conductivity of the soil. As the polyphosphate solution permeates the soil and the ground’s electrical conductivity increases, an array of ERT sensors continuously measure the change in conductivity. E4D uses the measurements to produce images of the polyphosphate remedy distribution over time.
“It’s sort of like using infrared goggles to see heat signatures in the dark, except this is underground — there is no direct line of sight,” said Tim Johnson, senior geophysicist at PNNL and lead developer of the E4D software. “With E4D, data collected by remote sensors are processed by a computer tomography algorithm to produce an image that reflects the environment.”
The polyphosphate remedy, delivered at two depths from a patchwork of 48 total injection wells, spreads through the soil. To help CHPRC employees view the spread of the phosphate solution underground, PNNL placed its ERT sensors in a unique cross-hole pattern within clusters of injection and monitoring wells.
During the phosphate solution injections, the ERT system injected electrical current into the subsurface. Sensors running the length of each well measured the corresponding changes in soil voltage.
Those measurements instantly traveled via wireless internet to Constance, a supercomputer at PNNL’s Institutional Computing Center. There, Constance processed the data, combining geology, physics, mathematics, and chemistry with E4D’s modeling software to create time-lapse 3-D images of the solution and its location within minutes.
A view of the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) process. The image at upper left is a frame of the time-lapse video produced by the ERT measurements.
As the E4D software executed its program, color-coded pools quickly began appearing on the display. Through a custom web interface, the science team, operations staff, and key stakeholders at multiple locations watched the mobility of the phosphate solution in near real-time the fourth dimension in E4D.
Within minutes of data acquisition, the E4D modeling software translated that information into images for onscreen display.
“We really appreciate the collaboration with PNNL on being able to use this technology,” said Marty Doornbos, CHPRC’s director of groundwater remedy selection and implementation. “It allowed us to monitor and verify the progress in real time to help ensure we reduce this risk to the Columbia River.”
Over the course of three weeks, the compiled images revealed a noticeable “breathing” pattern. The colored pools appeared as the injections took place during the day shift, then tapered off overnight, then reappeared as injections started again the next day.
“Right off the bat it looked like the new monitoring technique was working as well as or better than expected,” said Rob Mackley, a hydrogeologist at PNNL and manager of PNNL’s technical support on the project. “After two weeks of data, we knew it was a home run.”
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM’s Office of River Protection and Hanfordtank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) continuously strive to implement innovative technologies that improve worker safety and efficiency. One of the latest to hit the tank farms is easier to use than an ATM.
The technology, called radiological access control (RAC), launched Jan. 1. This computer-based system streamlines the process for employees entering and working in radiological work areas. Accessed through a kiosk, the RAC program verifies the employees’ radiological training and dosimetry — a measurement of radiation dose — before they’re authorized to enter a tank farm or radiological work area.
“The RAC system takes less than 30 seconds for a worker to log in or log out,” said Daren Christensen, a health physicist with WRPS’ single-shell retrieval and closure radiological controls organization.
RAC replaces the access control entry system (ACES), which required dose limits to be entered manually.
“The ACES system served its purpose, but we often had long lines of employees waiting to enter the radiological control area,” Christensen said. “RAC eliminates that problem and provides other benefits.”
Tank farm workers now use a kiosk to gain access to a radiological work area.
To access the radiological control area, employees scan their badges, dosimeters (devices that measure exposure to radiation), and radiological work permits at the kiosk before placing their dosimeters in a reader. The reader automatically sets the dose limits on the electronic dosimeters. This process verifies the employees meet the proper medical and radiological training qualifications. If employees without proper credentials or with expired credentials log into the RAC system, they receive a red screen with an alert not to enter the work zone.
WRPS has installed about 50 kiosks at or near work sites, mostly in the 200 East Area. Some locations, including the AY-102 change trailer and the 222-S Laboratory, have multiple kiosks.
Fluor Idaho employees hold up their DOE Voluntary Protection Program flag.
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – A group within Fluor Idaho, EM’s cleanup contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site, has achieved a new record by working more than a dozen years without a recordable injury or first-aid incident.
The Environmental Restoration (ER) program, which at times has consisted of as many as 100 employees, makes safety crucial to daily work. Some of the current staff of 20 employees participate in a stretch routine before work at Fluor Idaho’s Idaho Falls office building to prevent repetitive strain injury, common in office environments.
ER program personnel also conduct safety briefings to identify and mitigate hazards before working outdoors at the 890-square-mile INL Site. Such work activities include surveillance walk-downs on the desert terrain, collecting water samples from aquifer monitoring wells — some of which are more than 1,000 feet deep — and maintaining previously completed cleanup sites. In addition, summer brings the risk of bee stings, rattlesnakes, and heat stress.
“ER program employees are like a family,” Fluor Idaho Director Marc Jewett said. “They look out for each other and employ the buddy system whenever necessary to protect their colleagues.”
Fluor Idaho Field Team Leader Danny Smith said pre- and post-job briefings are key to the ER program’s safety success.
“Following our pre-job briefings, everyone involved with our field work knows what their responsibilities are,” he said. “At our post-job briefings, which are completed after each field event, we sit down and discuss what went right and how can we improve, and we document it.”
The National Safety Council recognized Fluor Idaho employees for working 1 million hours without occupational injury or illness involving days away from work.
In a related development, DOE’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) honored Fluor Idaho with its distinguished Superior Star Award and recognized the contractor for surpassing 1 million safe work hours during a nearly four-month period in 2018. Recipients of the award have a recordable incident injury rate that is at least 50 percent better than the industry average.
Fluor Idaho President Fred Hughes said he has been working with Jewett to apply some ER program safety initiatives to the entire company.
“They are obviously doing things right,” Hughes said. “We, as a company, can learn from their successes, and we won’t be satisfied until we lead DOE in safe and compliant operations.”
VPP began in 1994 to promote improved safety and health performance through publicly recognizing outstanding programs. Since that time, DOE has seen improved labor and management relations, reduced workplace injuries and illnesses, increased employee involvement, improved morale, and reduced absenteeism at participating sites.
Workers replaced 400 light fixtures across 21 waste storage buildings and outdoor areas at Hanford’s Central Waste Complex, improving energy efficiency and visibility and reducing operating costs.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM crews recently retrofitted lighting at the Central Waste Complex (CWC) at the Hanford Site, improving working conditions for facility personnel and saving nearly $70,000, with more savings to come.
In August 2016, EM Richland Operations Office (RL) contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) began replacing 400 light fixtures in 21 waste storage buildings and outdoor areas at Hanford’s storage complex for radioactive, low-level waste, and waste that needs repackaging. The project, which finished in September 2018, has significantly improved visibility in more than 300,000 square feet of facility space.
“The new lighting in all the waste storage buildings and shipping and receiving area has significantly reduced energy usage and maintenance costs while also improving working conditions for our teams,” said Steven Burke, CWC operations manager.
Upgraded lighting at Hanford’s Central Waste Complex has improved visibility within more than 300,000 square feet of facility space.
The switch to LED lights reduced overall wattage use by 60 percent and provided a total energy savings of 485,783 kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the energy required to power approximately 30 U.S. households for a year.
CHPRC has also earned more than $66,000 from a regional energy-efficiency incentive program offered by the Bonneville Power Administration, a Pacific Northwest-based electrical power supplier.
“Lighting quality is something that’s easy to take for granted,” said Al Farabee, RL project director for waste management. “Switching to LED fixtures improves visibility for our workers, making it safer to work around radioactive waste, and we’re using less energy while saving money.”
“This group of new appointees promises to bring many new perspectives to the current board,” said Michael Mikolanis, a co-deputy designated federal officer of the site-specific advisory board. “I am very impressed with the broad range of backgrounds and talents being represented.”
The new members fill vacancies on the CAB, a volunteer citizens’ panel that provides advice and recommendations to EM on its environmental cleanup operations at SRS. They will serve two-year terms.
The new members are L. Julia Ball, Carlos A. Cato, Aqeel K. Hasan, Ruth A. Hollingsworth, Jerome F. Mossbarger, Kenneth S. Sajwan, and Karl. M. Steele.
EM also reappointed nine members to the board for additional two-year terms, including John G. Allensworth, Susan F. Corbett, Thomas J. French, Douglas Howard, Daniel Kaminski, Narinder P.S. Malik, Robert A. Smith, David W. Vovakes, and Bobbie J. Williams.
The CAB typically meets the last Monday and Tuesday every other month for a day and a half at various locations along the Savannah River.
Meetings of the board and its committees are open to the public, and notices are posted on the board’s website. Visit the website for more information on the new members.