Efficiencies Drive Continued Success of Hanford Groundwater Treatment; Oak Ridge Site Helps Establish First Nuclear Cleanup Minor Degree in U.S.; and much more!
DOE Office of Environmental Management sent this bulletin at 05/07/2019 02:53 PM EDT
Hanford workers have installed piping to test a more efficient method for removing residual concentrations of hexavalent chromium from soil and groundwater.
RICHLAND, Wash. – The Hanford Site groundwater treatment team is making substantial progress in its cleanup mission, according to recent data from EM’s Richland Operations Office (RL) and contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC).
Crews treated 1 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater in the first five months of fiscal 2019, more than halfway to a goal of 1.8 billion for the year.
Workers have removed 1 million pounds of nitrate since Hanford’s largest groundwater treatment facility, the 200 West Pump and Treat Facility, began operations in 2012.
The site achieved cost savings of about $500,000 from improving efficiencies and modifying equipment at the 200 West Pump and Treat Facility in fiscal 2019, avoiding the cost of replacing equipment.
“We are always seeking more efficient and cost effective ways to improve the performance of our groundwater treatment network, with protection of the Columbia River our ultimate goal,” said Mike Cline, RL project director for the soil and groundwater division.
Recent upgrades to key equipment at Hanford’s largest groundwater treatment facility eliminated the need for replacing equipment, resulting in a cost savings of about $500,000 in fiscal 2019.
Collectively, efficiency improvements and cost-saving efforts at the 200 West Pump and Treat Facility and the five pump-and-treat systems along the river led the groundwater program to treat more than 2.5 billion gallons in fiscal 2018, at a cost of about 1.31 cents per gallon, the lowest cost per gallon since 2013.
Employees are also making headway removing other groundwater contaminants, including uranium, carbon tetrachloride, and hexavalent chromium.
Workers are preparing a test to address residual concentrations of chromium in the 100 K Area, where pump-and-treat efforts have reduced the area of chromium contamination in groundwater by more than 75 percent since 2010. The test will include saturating the soil with clean water. The goal is to force the residual chromium to groundwater in areas where it can be removed via wells and treated, accelerating the cleanup process, instead of waiting for the contamination to naturally migrate to groundwater. If the process is successful, it could be used elsewhere on the site.
“These accomplishments highlight the many worker-led innovations that continue to drive greater efficiencies in our groundwater treatment systems,” said Bill Barrett, vice president of CHPRC’s soil and groundwater remediation project. “Process improvements have resulted in substantial progress in the removal of contaminants, potentially shortening the timeframe required to meet cleanup goals and resulting in significant cost savings.”
EM's Oak Ridge Site has decommissioned and demolished some of the largest nuclear facilities in the world. Now, employees there are helping train the next generation entering the nuclear field through a new University of Tennessee minor degree.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – UCOR, EM’s Oak Ridge cleanup contractor, is playing a pivotal role in the first nuclear decommissioning and environmental management minor degree at a university or college in the U.S.
The new University of Tennessee (UT) program, which had its first graduates last year, is designed for the next generation of employees in the nuclear field interested in pursuing careers in EM’s cleanup mission and other nuclear related areas, such as work addressing aging reactors and nuclear facilities around the world. The minor complements a nuclear engineering degree, requiring additional coursework and training related to nuclear decommissioning and environmental management.
DOE Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management Manager Jay Mullis said the curriculum for the minor degree teaches students about a promising career field that will play an increasing role in the global economy and environmental stewardship.
“As DOE facilities and commercial nuclear plants continue to age, safe and timely decommissioning and demolition will become increasingly important,” Mullis said. “We need well trained men and women to lead and advance this mission.”
A view of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory central campus, where EM is scheduled to conduct cleanup in the years ahead.
Professionals in the nuclear field work across the commercial power industry and federal government, including DOE. With a fiscal 2019 budget of nearly $7.2 billion, EM addresses the nation’s Cold War environmental legacy resulting from five decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. This mission involves safely decommissioning and removing facilities associated with that legacy.
With the need for nuclear experts expected to grow, UT’s nuclear engineering department began offering the new degree through support from UCOR and its employees.
“Developing and maintaining a trained workforce to work in hazardous nuclear environmental cleanup projects is essential to the future of companies like ours,” UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter said. “Our industry needs the leaders that this program is producing. In Oak Ridge alone, there are jobs for decades to come associated with environmental cleanup.”
The University of Tennessee is offering the nation’s first nuclear decommissioning and environmental management minor degree.
Nuclear engineering students at the University of Tennessee have the opportunity to obtain the first nuclear decommissioning and environmental management minor degree in the U.S.
The new degree program has been successful so far.
“As the word spreads and graduates get jobs and experience, we expect participation will grow,” said Wes Hines, head of UT’s nuclear engineering department.
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, who heads the House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus, described the new degree as a great example of how UT is responding to the current nuclear industry workforce landscape.
“As a proud University of Tennessee grad, I am happy that my alma mater leads the pack when it comes to preparing today’s young people for careers in the nuclear industry,” Fleischmann said.
Four people graduated with the nuclear decommissioning and environmental management minor degree in 2018, and 16 students are on track to complete the program this year.
University officials confirmed that all of the seniors in this minor program will be employed after graduation this month, with some slated to join UCOR to support the Oak Ridge cleanup.
The DUF6 conversion facility at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Ohio achieved its highest operating “uptime” — 85 percent — since it began operations. Uptime represents how long the process operates over a given period of time. Past operating uptimes for the first-of-a-kind facilities at EM's Portsmouth and Paducah sites varied, but they had not previously exceeded an estimated 70 percent.
“Achieving sustained production is critical for the project to successfully complete its mission, so reaching this mark is a major accomplishment for the DUF6 Project,” said Reinhard Knerr, the project’s federal director for EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. “We are looking forward to the Paducah DUF6 conversion facility achieving this milestone in the near future as well.”
New systems for generating hydrogen, key to the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion process, are examples of recent improvements to plant reliability. They replaced less-reliable systems at both DUF6 conversion facilities.
Good reliability and high availability lead to improved productivity and safe sustainable operations, according to Fred Jackson, chief operating officer and chief engineer for Mid-America Conversion Services (MCS). MCS operates EM’s DUF6 conversion and storage facilities at Portsmouth and at Paducah, Kentucky.
"The hard work, dedication, and collaboration from the workforce, management, and support organizations, along with MCS's safety culture, are the solid foundation for significant successes like this,” Jackson said. He further attributed the recent success to thoughtful use of plant outages and strategic use of equipment downtime.
The uptime achievement follows the project’s attainment of its fiscal year production goal —converting 9,000 metric tons of material – six months ahead of schedule. That milestone followed a successful restart of all seven conversion lines to simultaneous operation following several pauses for safety and maintenance purposes. Numerous facility and process improvements were implemented at both conversion plants during that period.
Commissioned in 2011, EM’s conversion facilities are addressing more than 840,000 metric tons of DUF6 stored in 67,000 cylinders at both plant sites.
Workers use a crane to move a new pump to a Tank 41 riser for installation.
AIKEN, S.C. – Workers recently installed a new pump at EM’s Savannah River Site (SRS), moving them closer to finish preparing a second blend tank for the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) — a milestone in integration work for the facility.
DOE-Savannah River Assistant Manager for Waste Disposition Jim Folk said positioning the liquid waste program for upcoming SWPF operations is key to remediating waste and closing waste tanks.
“The liquid waste mission is transitioning from closing waste tanks individually to emptying multiple waste tanks at a time, and then closing multiple tanks at a time,” Folk said. “As technology evolves, so does the strategy to disposition waste.”
The new submersible blend pump set up in Tank 41 will support increased salt processing feed rates required when SWPF begins operations.
SWPF will accelerate dispositioning of salt waste, which accounts for up to 90 percent of the site’s tank farm inventory. Salt waste is currently processed through the site’s interim salt processing facilities and a newly deployed demonstration project, Tank Closure Cesium Removal.
Currently, one blend tank is used for salt processing. Tank 41 is one of three tanks scheduled to serve as blend tanks for SWPF. A blend tank receives raw salt solution from other liquid waste storage tanks. The pump is used to mix that material, which is then sampled and analyzed to ensure it meets criteria for acceptance at SWPF. Then, that batch is transferred to Tank 49, the designated SWPF feed tank.
The SRS liquid waste contractor, Savannah River Remediation (SRR), is converting waste tanks to support new functions, technologies, and facilities. The new pump, which has a 30-horsepower motor, was tested at the SRS testing facility’s mock waste tank earlier this year. The pump addition was a first-of-a-kind installation, making the task unique for SRR crews, said Rob Huff, SRR Tank 41 project manager for liquid waste/SWPF integration.
“We are installing the best equipment in the industry to facilitate reducing the risk to the public and environment,” Huff said. “Savannah River Remediation is ensuring the readiness of the liquid waste program by preparing waste tanks for the increased processing rates for the Salt Waste Processing Facility.”
A crew of commissioning technicians recently graduated from fundamentals training at a simulator to running systems at Hanford's Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.
RICHLAND, Wash. – During the World War II and Cold War plutonium production mission at Hanford, plants operated around the clock. It’s been more than 20 years since the Hanford Site was in a 24-hour production mode, but that’s changing.
Today, commissioning technicians are working a 24/7 shift schedule in the control room of the Low-Activity Waste Facility (LAW) at EM’s Office of River ProtectionWaste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) for contractor Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI). For the past year, BNI subcontractor Waste Treatment Completion Company has been training workers to run the plant, including on-site learning to manage the vast facility.
The latest group of 16 commissioning technicians was hired earlier this year and went through a rigorous qualification process that trained them to manage WTP safely and compliantly, and prepare it for operations as early as 2022.
Earlier this year, the WTP adopted a 24/7 shift schedule with 22 commissioning technicians, eight supervisors, and four engineers. The site will gradually build up its 24/7 rotating shift work to nearly 350 employees over the next 18 months.
“Now that they have successfully completed their fundamentals training, these technicians have been assigned out to the jobsite and are training on the WTP systems and direct-feed low-activity waste operations,” said Kent Smith, plant manager.
Training is comprised of a multitude of subjects, including teamwork, communications, and human performance improvement fundamentals.
Commissioning technicians also receive training on more than 200 separate systems in the LAW facility, Effluent Management Facility, Analytical Laboratory, and other support facilities. A key part of that training includes learning to run the software to manage the WTP.
WTP management runs the training in a 17,000-square-foot simulator building in Richland. The building contains a full-scale, fully functional replica of the LAW facility control room and traditional training classrooms.
Once qualified, the technicians are deployed to Hanford, where they will use the same processes, procedures, and proficiencies gained in the simulator in real life to help bring the WTP online as early as 2022.
A class of commissioning technicians began training on April 8, while another class is planned to begin in July.
Christina Santos stands in front of the Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit at the Savannah River Site.
AIKEN, S.C. – Expecting to discover an exciting opportunity in the oil industry, engineer Christina Santos applied for an internship at Savannah River Remediation (SRR) to work with tanks.
To her surprise, the tanks at EM’s Savannah River Site (SRS) turned out to hold radioactive liquid waste — not oil.
Santos took the summer internship in 2014 anyway, and soon became fascinated with the liquid waste process and excited about her career prospects at SRS.
MCU processes the salt waste feed from the SRS Tank Farms, which hold about 35 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste, 90 percent of which is salt waste. Once operational, the new Salt Waste Processing Facility will continue the salt processing mission at SRS, and MCU will be decommissioned.
Christina Santos works on the Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit’s instrumentation wall.
After graduating from the University of New Haven in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, Santos wanted a career to apply her knowledge in math, chemistry, and physics. Knowing the positive impact her work would have on the environment and community, she believed SRR was the right fit. Santos was right, as she says her career there has been fulfilling.
“I enjoy the technical aspect of what I do and the chemistry involved with salt waste processing,” Santos said. “But what is most important to me is the responsibility that comes with my role and the interactions with the organizations that facilitate working toward the mission of closing waste tanks.”
According to Jim Folk, DOE-Savannah River assistant manager for waste disposition, integrating young talent into the workforce helps SRS on many fronts.
“A reaction occurs when newly graduated engineers arrive on site and work with seasoned technical experts,” Folk said. “It is how innovative ideas are created, which helps drive the mission forward.”
When Santos moved to Aiken, she learned she shares her two favorite hobbies, horseback riding and tennis, with many people in the area.
“Working at the Savannah River Site and living in Aiken feels like it was meant to be all along,” Santos said. “I’m happy my journey in chemical engineering has brought me to this significant work at SRS.”
Mission Support Alliance employees gather together during a two-day workshop to improve worksite personnel relocations. They developed a plan to save more than $300,000 annually.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EMRichland Operations Office (RL) contractor Mission Support Alliance's (MSA) continuous improvement program has led to greater work efficiencies and annual cost savings of more than $300,000 for personnel moves.
Through its Operating Excellence program at the Hanford Site, MSA offers workshops to organizations and groups across the site to help them review processes and identify areas of improvement through “lean” thinking with Six Sigma methodologies, used to eliminate waste and reduce inconsistencies. Hanford workers certified as “Black Belt” facilitators have led over 200 workshops, coaching participants on how to review processes, assess needs, and identify improvements.
“This program has continued to grow, making positive impacts across the site,” said Joe Franco, RL deputy manager. “Not only has the Operating Excellence program resulted in cost savings, but we’ve also seen renewed energy and excitement from employees in organizations that were weighed down by unnecessary steps.”
Recently, MSA held a two-day workshop on personnel moves, which involve coordinating with multiple teams to minimize disruption for workers relocating to a different office or facility.
MSA’s real estate services, work management, information management, and maintenance services teams, with the support of senior leadership, reviewed the current relocation coordination process and brainstormed improvements.
The result was the elimination of more than 90 percent of the process steps and a reduction in turnaround time and scheduling by 78 percent. The team developed a plan to implement a new process resulting in annual savings of more than $300,000.
“With an average of 450 move requests each year, this will be a huge impact to our workers and our customers,” said Clark Stolle, director of MSA real estate services.
The Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, being built by prime contractor, Bechtel National, Inc., covers 65 acres with four nuclear facilities as well as operations and maintenance buildings, utilities, and office space. The site is expected to begin treating waste as soon as 2022.
“The Department of Energy has high expectations for world-class performance by its contractors,” EM Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance. “Bechtel National, Inc.’s (BNI) improved its performance on the project in some key areas, but needs to strive for continued improvement in several others.”
BNI earned an overall average rating of satisfactory, and demonstrated strengths in the following project areas:
Working with EM and the Washington State Department of Ecology to obtain permit approval for construction of the Effluent Management Facility, a facility needed to treat secondary waste generated when treating tank waste at WTP.
Improving coordination, tracking, measurement, and reporting on activities that support a program preparing the WTP and workforce to begin treating tank waste as early as 2022.
Improving abilities to measure contract performance by aligning multiple schedules.
EM identified the following areas for improvement:
Maintaining components installed during several years of construction to ensure they don’t fail or need replacement during testing and turnover of systems or during commissioning of the plant prior to startup.
Achieving project deadlines for testing components and turning over systems from construction to commissioning.
Resolving system testing and turnover delays due to a backlog of maintenance or procurement for replacement parts.
BNI’s 2018 fee award was on pace with the amount the contractor earned the previous year.
View EM’s scorecard for BNI’s latest award fee here.
SALAMANCA, N.Y. – Students in a team from Franklinville High School observe a taxidermy mount of a fisher during a practical exam at a wildlife station in last week’s Cattaraugus County Envirothon in New York state. EMWest Valley Demonstration Project cleanup contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley is a sponsor of the local outdoor environmental competition for area students. In the event, students test their knowledge of aquatic ecology, forestry, wildlife, soils, and agriculture. A team from Cattaraugus-Little Valley High School won the competition and will represent the county at the state’s Envirothon later this month.