As U.S. Marks Trinity Test’s 75th Anniversary, EM Continues Progress at Manhattan Project Sites; DOE Honors SRS Team With Excellence Award for Coal Ash Cleanup; and much more!

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EM Update | Vol. 12, Issue 17 | July 14, 2020

As U.S. Marks Trinity Test’s 75th Anniversary, EM Continues Progress at Manhattan Project Sites
The History of a Park Dedicated to the Manhattan Project Story
B Reactor: Preserving a Transformative Piece of U.S. History
DOE Honors SRS Team With Excellence Award for Coal Ash Cleanup
EM Prepares for Demolition in Heart of ORNL
Next Mega-Volume Saltstone Disposal Unit Taking Shape at SRS
Hanford Tank Operations Go Digital to Support 24/7 Waste Treatment
New Equipment Strengthens Environmental Monitoring at SRS
West Valley Advances Site Security, Safety With New Radios

As U.S. Marks Trinity Test’s 75th Anniversary, EM Continues Progress at Manhattan Project Sites

Editor’s Note: Research and testing efforts of the secret Manhattan Project were realized with the detonation of the world’s first nuclear device at the Trinity Test site on July 16, 1945. Today, 75 years later, EM continues cleanup from the environmental impacts of national security efforts at the Manhattan Project sites and elsewhere. In this issue, EM Update highlights the cleanup, long-term management, and historical recognition of the Manhattan Project sites. Click here to view EM’s Manhattan Project webpage.

Cleanup locations at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Manhattan Project site, include hillsides, canyon sides, and canyon bottoms. This photo shows soil cleanup in Los Alamos Canyon, which is adjacent to the former Technical Area-01 and the center of the laboratory during the Manhattan Project.

On July 16, 1945, the world's first nuclear explosion occurred more than 200 miles south of Los Alamos in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in what was code-named the Trinity Test — a name inspired by the poems of John Donne.

A plutonium implosion device was successfully tested at that site 75 years ago. The test indicated that an atomic weapon using plutonium could be readied for use by the U.S. military.

The test was completed by staff with the Manhattan Project, whose “secret cities” — Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington — were conceived, built, and operated in secrecy as they supported weapons development during World War II. Today, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford are among the sites of EM’s cleanup efforts.

The original gate through which workers entered Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project years.

Los Alamos

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was established in 1943 as Site Y of the Manhattan Project for a single purpose: to design and build an atomic weapon.

While the scope of work conducted at DOE’s senior national laboratory has broadened considerably since the pivotal day of the Trinity Test, LANL’s primary mission has remained nuclear weapons research and development.

While executing this mission during the Manhattan Project era and in the decades that immediately followed, LANL released hazardous and radioactive materials to the environment through outfalls, stack releases, and disposal areas. Additionally, mixed low-level and transuranic (TRU) waste was generated and staged in preparation for off-site disposition.

The EM mission at Los Alamos is to safely remediate and reduce risks to the public, workers, and the environment associated with legacy material, facilities, and waste sites at LANL. Of the more than 2,100 contaminated sites at LANL originally identified for remediation, more than half have been cleaned up and closed. Those range from small spill sites with a few cubic feet of contaminated soil to large landfills encompassing several acres.

Some of those landfills were at Technical Area 21, which was a complex of Manhattan Project and Cold War buildings that housed LANL’s plutonium processing facility. It was the site of groundbreaking tritium research for energy, environment, and weapons defense research.
Much of the Manhattan Project and early Cold War operations took place at what was known as Technical Area 01. Perched on a plateau near a canyon edge, the site was LANL’s original footprint and is now part of the Los Alamos townsite. Remediating legacy materials there has been one of EM’s biggest priorities at LANL.

Over the coming decade, as LANL continues to advance DOE’s national security, science, technology and energy missions, EM’s Los Alamos program will remained focused on protecting human health and the environment by addressing groundwater contamination plumes, processing above-ground-stored TRU waste, and retrieving belowground-stored TRU waste at Technical Area 54 for off-site disposal.

An aerial view of the K-25 Building’s construction at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project. In 18 months, workers built the world’s largest building, and its gaseous diffusion technology proved to be the preferred enrichment method during the Cold War.

Oak Ridge

In 1942, the U.S. government acquired land that became the Oak Ridge Site. By March 1943, 56,000 acres were sealed behind fences and major industrial facilities were under construction to develop a first-of-a-kind weapon, and a secret city of nearly 75,000 people arose almost overnight to support this world-changing task.

During the Manhattan Project, the K-25, S-50, and Y-12 plants were built to explore different methods to enrich uranium, while the X-10 site was established as a pilot plant for the Graphite Reactor and to explore how to produce plutonium.

Throughout the following decades, these sites would each go on to push the boundaries of science that revolutionized power production, enhanced national defense, advanced understanding in biology and genetics, and developed new fields of medicine. While these missions were beneficial to the world, they also created environmental legacies that EM is now cleaning and removing to enable the next generation of innovation.

The K-25 plant, present-day East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), enriched uranium using the gaseous diffusion process. Due to the success of this technique, the original plant was expanded during the Cold War. It contained five enormous uranium enrichment facilities, including the largest building in the world when it was constructed, and hundreds of support facilities.

After nearly 15 years of large-scale demolition and environmental cleanup, Oak Ridge’s EM program is completing major cleanup at ETTP this year — a goal known as Vision 2020 and one of EM’s 2020 priorities. It will mark the first time in the world an entire enrichment complex has been removed. The site is being transformed into a multi-use industrial park that offers opportunities for economic development, conservation, and historic preservation to the community.

After nearly 15 years of large-scale demolition, EM has cleared away 13 million square feet of aging, contaminated structures at the East Tennessee Technology Park at Oak Ridge.

Separately, Y-12 was built to enrich uranium for the first atomic weapon using an electromagnetic separation process. The Cold War brought change to Y-12 as new processes for separating lithium were added and uranium enrichment missions were conducted elsewhere.

EM is ramping up efforts that are addressing Y-12’s primary contaminant, mercury. Those efforts include construction of the new Mercury Treatment Facility, which is now underway, and funding research for new mercury remediation technologies. Crews are transitioning to the site to begin deactivating and demolishing its old, deteriorating facilities. This will eliminate hazards, enable modernization, and provide space for new missions at Y-12.

The first mission of X-10, present day Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was to develop and test the experimental Graphite Reactor, which went critical in March 1944. It was used initially as a pilot test facility for plutonium production. In the years following the Manhattan Project, 13 research reactors were designed and built onsite, and staff developed or participated in developing numerous nuclear material reprocessing methods.

Scientists there would also go on to research genetics and the biological effects of radiation. ORNL’s mission continued to grow through the years and has expanded its capabilities to be at the forefront of supercomputing, advanced manufacturing, materials research, neutron science, clean energy, and national security.

EM is supporting ORNL’s missions by eliminating its inventory of TRU waste and uranium-233, and ramping up efforts that will deactivate and demolish its large inventory of old, contaminated facilities. These efforts will eliminate risks, enhance safety, enable modernization, and make room for the next big scientific discovery.

Through EM’s work, these sites have a bright future to continue Oak Ridge’s rich history of leadership and innovation for the next 75 years.

In this photo from World War II, Hanford's B Reactor can be seen between the water towers at right, along with other facilities that supported reactor operations. The reactor began operating in September 1944 and was shut down from 1946-1948. It then went back into service until 1968.

Hanford

Once a thriving agricultural area known for its early-to-market fruits, the area in southeastern Washington State now known as the Hanford Site transformed almost overnight when the Army Corps of Engineers chose it in 1942 as the site of the Manhattan Project's plutonium production facilities.

More than 51,000 workers from across the nation came to Hanford in just a few months. In just 18 months, these workers constructed and began to operate a massive industrial complex to fabricate, test, and irradiate uranium fuel and chemically separate out plutonium. That plutonium was used for the Trinity Test, and for the atomic weapon used on Nagasaki, Japan on Aug. 9, 1945.

Hanford continued to expand its plutonium production capabilities in support of the Cold War, ending up with nine production reactors and five chemical separations plants. For more than 40 years, reactors located at Hanford produced plutonium for America’s defense program. In 1989, the Hanford Site mission changed to cleaning up liquid and solid waste, taking down facilities, and restoring the environment to protect the Columbia River.

The control room of the B Reactor gives visitors to this national historic landmark a glimpse of what it was like to work inside the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor.

Since 1989, Hanford has been the site of an extensive cleanup undertaken by EM in agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology. Since the cleanup of Hanford began:

1,353 waste sites have been remediated and cleared;
18.3 million tons of solid waste has been safely collected and disposed;
23 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater has been cleaned and returned to drinking water quality.

All of the nuclear reactors associated with the Manhattan Project were decommissioned and safely placed offline.

-Contributors: Bruce Drake, Steven Horak, Ben Williams

The History of a Park Dedicated to the Manhattan Project Story

This 2016 photo shows a view of the Hanford Site's B Reactor National Historic Landmark, a vibrant tourism and education draw that is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

The Manhattan Project was an unprecedented, top-secret research and development program created during World War II to develop an atomic weapon.

The beginning of the atomic age is recognized as one of the most important events of the 20th century. Its profound legacies include the proliferation of nuclear weapons, vast environmental remediation efforts, the development of the national laboratory system, and peaceful uses of nuclear materials such as nuclear medicine.

In 2001, DOE worked with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and a panel of distinguished historic preservation experts to develop preservation options for six DOE-owned Manhattan Project-era historic facilities that the panel found to be of extraordinary historical significance and worthy of “commemoration as national treasures.”

In 2004, Congress directed the National Park Service (NPS) to work with DOE to evaluate whether it was appropriate and feasible to establish a new unit of the national park system dedicated to telling the story of the Manhattan Project.

After a decade of work by local communities, elected officials, DOE, NPS, and other stakeholders, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park was authorized as part of the Carl Levin and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015.
The park includes facilities at the three primary Manhattan Project locations — Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford.

At Los Alamos, more than 6,000 scientists and support personnel worked to design and build the atomic weapons. The park currently includes three areas there: Gun Site, which was associated with the design of the “Little Boy” bomb; V-Site, which was used to assemble components of the Trinity device; and Pajarito Site, which was used for plutonium chemistry research.

A view of the grand opening of the K-25 History Center at Oak Ridge in February 2020. The K-25 footprint is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

The Clinton Engineer Works, which became the Oak Ridge Reservation, supported three parallel industrial processes for uranium enrichment and experimental plutonium production.

The park includes the X-10 Graphite Reactor National Historic Landmark, which produced small quantities of plutonium to support Los Alamos weapons work; buildings at the Y-12 complex, home to the electromagnetic separation process for uranium enrichment; and the site of the K-25 building, where gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment technology was pioneered.

The Hanford Engineer Works, now the Hanford Site, was home to more than 51,000 workers who constructed and operated a massive industrial complex to fabricate, test, and irradiate uranium fuel in reactors and then chemically separate out plutonium to be used in weapons.

The Hanford landscape is also representative of one of the first acts of the Manhattan Project — the condemnation of private property and eviction of homeowners and American Indian tribes to clear the way for the top-secret work. The park includes the B Reactor National Historic Landmark, which produced the material for the Trinity Test and plutonium bomb; and four turn-of-the-century historic buildings that give visitors a glimpse into the history of the Hanford area before the arrival of the Manhattan Project.

The park is managed as a collaborative partnership between DOE, which continues to own, preserve, and maintain the park facilities and will work to expand public access to them; and NPS, which administers the park, interprets the story of the Manhattan Project, and provides technical assistance to DOE on historic preservation. A memorandum of agreement between DOE and the U.S. Department of the Interior signed in November 2015 officially created the park and guides implementation of the park mission by the two agencies.

In this 2018 photo, visitors to the Pajarito Site at Los Alamos learn about Manhattan Project history. The site includes the Pond Cabin, Battleship Bunker, and Slotin Building used by scientists developing the plutonium bomb.

While a key component of the national historical park mission within DOE is enhancing public access to the park facilities, DOE and its contractors are also working to develop online resources so virtual visitors and students can learn about the historic facilities and the Manhattan Project.

This DOE webpage offers a wide range of in-print, online, and in-person Manhattan Project historical resources. The Department also produced podcasts on the history and impact of the Manhattan Project.

At the Los Alamos park unit, the Bradbury Science Museum, operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory, provides numerous electronic resources, including an overview of the park and Project Y in Los Alamos, and an overview of Manhattan Project sites on laboratory land. The Bradbury Science Museum’s online collections database allows visitors to search artifacts, photos, and historic documents from the Manhattan Project. LANL has also produced a video of historic sites and work to preserve them for future generations.

DOE, in partnership with a local biking club and the National Park Service, has sponsored an annual bike ride around the B Reactor at the Hanford Site, as shown here in this 2016 photo.

Oak Ridge's K-25 Virtual Museum offers visitors information about the Manhattan Project and Cold war.

The Hanford park unit is accessible to virtual visitors through a variety of resources, including those provided by partners in the community. DOE offers virtual access to the B Reactor National Historic Landmark via a 360-degree camera system.

The Hanford History Project (HHP) at Washington State University Tri Cities preserves DOE’s federal Manhattan Project and Cold War collection of artifacts and oral histories. Virtual access to these collections, as well as the HHP’s collections of oral histories, donated archive materials, documents, and photographs are available at HHP’s website.

The B Reactor Museum Association provides a series of videos with in-depth information on how the B Reactor functions and why it is recognized as a scientific and engineering marvel.

NPS maintains the official park webpage.

B Reactor: Preserving a Transformative Piece of U.S. History

In this 2016 photo, schoolchildren explore the B Reactor, a popular field trip destination for elementary, middle, and high schools. EM’s Richland Operations Office works closely with educational institutions, tribes, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camps, clubs, and other interested groups to provide access to B Reactor and customized tours.

The atomic age began in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, with the Trinity Test — the culmination of the top-secret Manhattan Project.

This first-ever detonation of a nuclear device led to a new era marked by the development of weapons with previously unimaginable power, and a complicated legacy that includes the fields of nuclear medicine and nuclear energy, the growth of a vital national laboratory system, and EM’s vast environmental cleanup.

The B Reactor at the Hanford Site was the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor, and produced plutonium for the Trinity Test and one of two weapons deployed in August 1945 during World War II. B Reactor is now part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Other historic facilities at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos are also part of the park.

While it only took 11 months in 1943 to construct B Reactor, preserving the reactor and later creating the park took considerably longer. Nonetheless, the decades-long effort exemplifies what is possible through strong partnerships among Congress, local communities, DOE headquarters, EM sites, and other federal agencies.

Former B Reactor workers sought recognition for the facility’s historical status, resulting in its designation as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1976, and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1994.

With broad community support, the reactor was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. In 2008, with DOE support, the U.S. Department of Interior designated B Reactor a National Historic Landmark. After a decade of a congressionally mandated study by the National Park Service and DOE, bipartisan legislation was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2014 establishing the park.

Community advocates and local leaders in the three Manhattan Project communities and elsewhere across the nation drove efforts to preserve the reactor.

For EM and Hanford, the vision and tenacity of community leaders and organizations — including the B Reactor Museum Association, the Tri Cities Development Council, local governments, and Visit Tri Cities — and the work of their representatives in Congress made the park possible.

EM and Hanford leadership safely preserved the B Reactor and supported the creation of the park, recognizing that providing controlled, safe public access to the historic facilities over time would be a powerful educational tool in explaining the EM mission and progress to taxpayers.

More than 12,000 people typically visit the B Reactor each year, and international visitors have come from more than 90 countries worldwide, bringing an estimated $3 million in tourism to the local community.

DOE Honors SRS Team With Excellence Award for Coal Ash Cleanup

AIKEN, S.C. – A team from the Savannah River Site (SRS) that completed cleanup of coal ash-contaminated land a year early and at a savings of more than $8 million has been recognized by DOE with the prestigious Project Management Excellence Award.

The project team remediated and closed the D Area coal ash landfill, two coal ash basins, and a coal pile runoff basin. It’s an area consisting of over 90 acres at SRS used to manage ashes from the D-Area Powerhouse, which provided steam and electricity for SRS missions for more than 59 years.

The powerhouse was closed in 2012, and DOE-Savannah River (DOE-SR) and contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) undertook cleanup in 2014.

An award citation signed by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette noted the project team built a strong relationship with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to negotiate a cleanup schedule.

The award was announced at an EM workforce meeting on July 14.

"Not only did the team come in ahead of schedule and under budget, but they’re also being recognized for the strong relationship they developed with the EPA and state regulators," EM Senior Advisor William "Ike" White said. "We all know how important those relationships are to achieving success across EM."

"The success of the SRS D Area Ash Project is a direct result of a sound closure plan developed by a core team of DOE-Savannah River and SRNS project managers and supported by our state and federal environmental regulators," said Michael D. Budney, manager, DOE-SR Operations Office. "The strategy of a phased approach provided schedule and financial flexibility and allowed the team to set the standard for how to clean up one of the biggest environmental problems facing power generating facilities across the U.S., whether commercial or federally owned."

Before-and-after photos of the Savannah River Site ash basin cleanup project. Crews remediated over 90 acres of federal property.

Remediation was complicated by immense rains from multiple hurricanes. Each inch of rain resulted in roughly 1 million gallons of stormwater that had to be managed and pass toxicity testing before it could be discharged. Despite the challenges, the $65.8 million project was completed in 2019, a year ahead of schedule and more than $8 million under budget.

"This mammoth cleanup task consolidated more than 400,000 cubic yards of coal ash and was completed more than a year ahead of schedule while saving millions," said Stuart MacVean, SRNS president and CEO. "We were pursuing performance excellence, safe operations, and timely completion with this multi-year project, and those goals were not just met, but exceeded."

The project team includes Karen Adams, federal project director; Todd Alasin, project management support with DOE; Brian Hennessey, Federal Facilities Agreement project manager with DOE; Susan Bell, SRNS project manager; Julee Smith, SRNS project controls lead; Drew Murphy, SRNS buyer; and Don Baston, SRNS design engineering.

Each year DOE recognizes various projects that have demonstrated excellence in project management. The Secretary's Excellence Award is presented to a project team that achieves “exceptional results” in completing a project within cost and schedule.

EM Prepares for Demolition in Heart of ORNL

Crews are manually adding 12,000 square feet of fabric to the trusses to complete the cover for the protective tent at the Building 3026 demolition project at Oak Ridge.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its contractor UCOR are preparing to demolish the remaining structures associated with Building 3026, the former Radioisotope Development Lab.

“This project is a big step for our program because it marks the beginning of the next phase of major cleanup in Oak Ridge,” said Nathan Felosi, ORNL portfolio federal project director for OREM. “Taking down these hot cells will remove a longstanding risk from the central campus area.”

Workers are finalizing the installation of a six-story protective tent to keep nearby research facilities protected while the final two hot cells from Building 3026 are demolished. Hot cells are thick, concrete rooms that are heavily shielded to provide researchers protection from highly radiative material.

Using a 175-ton crane, crews set a foundation of 92 16,000-pound blocks for the protective tent. Workers then began using the crane to erect 20 steel trusses to create the frame. To complete the structure, nearly 12,000 square feet of fabric is being added in two sections.

Building 3026 was originally built in 1945 to support isotope separation and packaging, but it was later used to examine irradiated reactor fuel experiments and components. The outer structure and four of the facility’s hot cells were demolished using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. However, work has continued on the remaining structures.

Building 3026 was so severely degraded that the outer structure was demolished more than 10 years ago.

A 175-ton crane is being used to install a six-story protective cover to keep research facilities near Building 3026 safe during demolition.

Last fall, UCOR completed tasks to eliminate contamination pathways and prepare the remaining structures for demolition. That included pumping and grouting a 47-foot-long underground transfer tunnel formerly used to load radioactive material into the hot cells.

The protective tent will be completed this month, and demolition is scheduled later this year.

As major cleanup is completed at the East Tennessee Technology Park, OREM is transitioning its skilled, experienced workforce to ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex to ramp up large-scale cleanup at those sites.

Crews will work across ORNL’s central campus area to deactivate former research reactors and other radioisotope laboratory facilities in preparation for demolition. This work will eliminate hazards across the site and clear land for future research missions.

-Contributor: Susanne Dupes

Next Mega-Volume Saltstone Disposal Unit Taking Shape at SRS

AIKEN, S.C. – The EM Savannah River Site (SRS) landscape is changing again as Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 8 cell construction work is underway.

“SDUs are a visual reminder of the progress being made toward the Department’s goal to safely and efficiently dispose of waste at SRS, making the community and environment safer,” DOE-Savannah River SDU Federal Project Director Shayne Farrell said.

SDU 8 is the third 32-million-gallon capacity, mega-volume SDU to be built by liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) at SRS. Mega-volume SDUs stand 43 feet high and 375 feet in diameter.

SDU 8 work has moved past preparing the site and installing a mudmat. SRR is now setting rebar in preparation for placing the two-foot-thick foundation slab, the step that moves the work on the cell to the construction phase.

Mega-volume SDU design and construction is based on the first successful mega-volume SDU, SDU 6, which entered into operation in August 2017. Construction of the SDU 7 cell is complete, and it is currently being internally lined to protect the concrete and provide a robust leak tightness barrier.

All SDU work is being executed safely with detailed plans and protocols in place to meet all federal and South Carolina state requirements for COVID-19 controls. Worker participation and management review of ongoing safety practices and protocols is keeping workers safe.

Savannah River Remediation subcontractor employees set rebar in preparation for the foundation slab at Saltstone Disposal Unit 8.

SDUs are the safe and permanent destination for decontaminated salt solution (DSS) at SRS. Salt waste is decontaminated through processes that remove radioactive isotopes, such as cesium. The Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is scheduled to begin hot commissioning in 2020 — an EM priority for 2020 — and will process up to 9 million gallons of waste per year after.

DSS is transferred to the Saltstone Production Facility and combined with materials to form saltstone, which is pumped into SDUs while it is still liquid and then hardens for permanent disposal. SRR’s mission is to safely store, treat, and dispose of radioactive liquid waste and operationally close SRS waste tanks.

Work leading up to cell construction included a large excavation and the installation of a lower mud mat on SDU 8, followed by installation of the high-density polyethylene liner and then an upper mud mat. SDU 8 will be pieced together by placing 25 walls around 208 columns that support the one-foot-thick roof, then wrapped with nearly 350 miles of reinforcing cable.

“This SDU program team, including our DOE counterparts and subcontractors, are a very talented group of dedicated professionals,” said SRR SDU Project Manager Jon Lunn. “They continue to work safely to help execute the SRS liquid waste mission.”

As a strategic approach to maximize resources, SRR is building SDU 9 in parallel with SDU 8. SDU 9 cell construction preparation work is in progress. SDU 8 construction is expected to be complete by February 2023.

Hanford Tank Operations Go Digital to Support 24/7 Waste Treatment

Upgraded digital technology at the Hanford Tank Farms has eliminated reliance on myriad white boards, clipboards, and paper. The upgrades have also improved worker safety and efficiency, simplified operations, automated data collection, and electronically provided timely and accurate information to the workforce.

RICHLAND, Wash. – New digital systems have significantly upgraded waste tank operations at the Hanford Site as the workforce prepares to support round-the-clock conversion of tank waste into glass in the site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant when the complex is operating.

EM Office of River Protection contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) has implemented a series of digital initiatives over the past several years. They include a suite of more than 60 software products that provide improved command and control of operations while reducing repetitive manual data activities and actions that can generate human error.

“In the past, we relied heavily on paper records that required more time to update and generally slowed our ability to communicate compared to using electronic records,” said Dimple Patel, EM Tank Farms instrumentation and control safety system oversight engineer. “Today’s digital technology makes recordkeeping more efficient and communications much faster, both of which contribute to mission progress.”

The upgraded digital technology has eliminated reliance on myriad white boards, clipboards, and paper. The upgrades have also improved worker safety and efficiency, simplified operations, automated data collection, and provided timely and accurate information to the workforce.

“We’re building the infrastructure that will provide critical information decision-makers need, wherever they are,” said Mirwaise Aurah, WRPS process and controls systems engineering manager.

Large wall-mounted touchscreen tablets provide an instant messaging system covering work activities, weather conditions, sampling plans, event notifications, and more.

In a further enhancement, six control rooms scattered throughout tank operating areas were consolidated into a single central control room. Through a network of secure wireless systems, technicians in the control room monitor leak detection systems, tank waste levels, waste transfer systems, and tank ventilation systems to ensure the integrity and continued safe operation of Hanford’s waste tanks.

-Contributor: Mike Butler

New Equipment Strengthens Environmental Monitoring at SRS

In this February 2020 photo, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) Scientist Jason Walker, left, inspects a new portable air monitoring station, while SRNS Environmental Specialist Jesse Baxley records readings from one of several permanent units at the Savannah River Site.

AIKEN, S.C. – The EM program has added two portable units to its network of 14 permanent air monitoring stations at the Savannah River Site (SRS), helping extend the reach of its study of the atmosphere in and around the site.

“The geographical coverage and the data obtained by these air sampling stations is excellent,” said Jason Walker, a scientist with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the site’s management and operations contractor. “However, with the purchase of two portable sampling units we can significantly increase our options, placing these state-of-the-art portable units wherever needed to add to the versatility of our overall program.”

The SRS Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program monitors effects SRS has on the environment. There is one permanent air monitoring station onsite, 10 at the site perimeter, and three within population centers near SRS. Initially, each portable system will be temporarily located near a permanent station, then scientists will compare the data. The units will then be placed in storage where they can quickly be accessed and deployed as needed.

“This will enable us to make small adjustments to further improve the data received from each permanent station. A portable unit can also be used to temporarily collect data while a permanent unit is undergoing repairs,” Walker said.

“I believe our emergency management team and environmental monitoring group are the best at what they do in the DOE complex,” said Rick Sprague, senior vice president, environment, safety, health, and quality at SRNS. “We continue to pursue innovative solutions to further enhance our environmental and emergency management programs.”

-Contributor: DT Townsend

West Valley Advances Site Security, Safety With New Radios

Security Police Officer Garrey with Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services, a contractor to EM’s West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP), uses one of the site’s new radios to talk with other officers at WVDP.

WEST VALLEY, N.Y. – EM’s West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) recently enhanced its security and safety by purchasing digital trunked radios that can assign frequency channels to various groups of users.

The new devices can communicate with all existing radios at WVDP, as well fire as departments, local and state police, and emergency medical services. WVDP programmed the new equipment to allow interaction with those emergency response organizations.

“Our old radios were more than 20 years old, and needed to be replaced,” said David Schuman, safeguards and security manager for CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley, EM’s cleanup contractor at the site. “These new radios enhance our security posture and improve officer safety. Improving our ability to share and communicate information more accurately will help us to better handle any situation that may arise.”

The site’s old radios needed to be replaced when frequencies, groups, and users changed. The new radios will provide a cost savings because they can be reprogrammed instead of replaced to accommodate such changes.

The new devices will improve communications because they are capable of interoperability, which allows communication between WVDP and emergency responders across the U.S.

“We have learned a lot over the years about the need for interoperability when it comes to emergencies and communications,” Schuman said. “These new radios will have a positive impact for WVDP’s security force, as well as employees and visitors.”

-Contributor: Joseph Pillittere

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