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Important Dates
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*All times are Central Time
April 13:
Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group Quarterly Conference Call - 2 PM*
April 20-24:
CANCELLED: Radiation Specialist Course - Arvada, CO
April 28:
CANCELLED: 2020 NTSF Newcomers Orientation Webinar - 1 PM*
April 29:
May 5-7:
May 18:
CANCELLED:
TRMTC Spring Meeting - Scottsdale, AZ
May 19-21:
CANCELLED: NTSF 2020 Annual Meeting - Scottsdale, AZ
May 19:
June 8-11:
Dresden/Morris DOE Site Visit - *Tentative Dates*
June 8-9:
Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group Quarterly Conference Call - 2 PM*
September 16-18:
September 29:
Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP) Exercise - Moberly, MO
Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group Quarterly Conference Call - 2 PM*
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Join Our List
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COMMITTEE HAPPENINGS
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| James Rashilla, Nebraska |
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In March, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts appointed James Rashilla to be the state's representative on the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC). James has attended MRMTC meetings in the past and looks forward to his official role. He is a career emergency management professional with nearly a decade of experience in military and civilian emergency response, specializing in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) protection, hazardous materials, environmental protection, and occupational health and safety. He holds a BS in Emergency Management from the University of Nebraska Omaha with minors in Aviation Administration and Fire Service Management. Welcome, James!
As many of you already know, the Annual Meeting of the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) has been canceled, and with it, the Spring Meeting of the MRMTC. Details about the NTSF cancellation can be found below. CSG Midwest staff are aware of how occupied people are with their day jobs and personal lives in the midst of the coronavirus, but we will be getting in contact with MRMTC members in the coming weeks to discuss moving some of the planned Spring Meeting content to a webinar or conference call format. For example, a briefing that was going to be given by the Regional Tribal Engagement (RTE) Working Group may be converted to a webinar and opened to all who are interested, not just MRMTC members.
If you have looked at the "Important Dates" calendar to the left, you may have noticed that several events have been postponed or cancelled, including upcoming Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program (TEPP) trainings. However, there are still some upcoming events for which planning is still going ahead. For example, DOE's visit to the Dresden and Morris sites in Illinois is, as of this writing, still scheduled for some time the week of June 8. The Dane County Rad-X Exercise that was supposed to take place in March has been posponed until at least after the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which itself has been postponed to the week of August 17, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Finally, planning for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP) Exercise on September 29, in Moberly, Missouri, is continuing. MRMTC Co-Chair Tiffany Drake, Missouri, is heavily involved in this planning.
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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As mentioned above, the 2020 Annual Meeting of the NTSF has been cancelled. This decision was made by the Department of Energy
(DOE) and the Western Governors' Association (WGA) to help protect the health and safety of attendees and their families. Please see the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
guidance
for up-to-date information and recommendations on limiting the spread of COVID-19.
There are no plans to reschedule the 2020 meeting. The next meeting of the NTSF will be hosted by the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) in 2021. However, it is possible that some programming from the 2020 Annual Meeting will be converted to webinars over the course of this Summer. The Planning Committee will discuss options in its conference call coming up this month.
WGA has arranged for the cancellation of all room reservations at the Embassy Suites Scottsdale made under the NTSF room block. You should not expect a cancellation confirmation from the hotel. CSG Midwest has finished the process of refunding all registration fees for the NTSF meeting. With very few exceptions, refunds were posted back to the credit card used to pay the fees. The refunds should post within a week, if they haven't already. Please contact Lisa Janairo if you have any questions about registration refunds.
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| FOCUS THIS MONTH |
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DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) Issues 2020-2030 "Strategic Vision"
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| DOE-EM Senior Adviser William "Ike" White outlining the office's "strategic vision" for the next decade at the Waste Management Symposia 2020 (photo courtesy of DOE) |
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Formed in 1989, DOE-EM was given the task of safely addressing the environmental costs and liabilities that resulted from decades of government-sponsored nuclear weapons production and nuclear energy research. At its inception, DOE-EM had to clean up 107 sites totaling approximately 3,300 square miles. Thirty years later, at the start of 2020, work at only 16 of the original sites still needs to be finished, covering an area of about 300 square miles. Of those sites, only Portsmouth in southern Ohio lies within the MRMTC's territory.
After 30 years of work and with a new decade starting, DOE-EM senior adviser William "Ike" White
announced a new strategic vision for the office's next 10 years at the Waste Management Symposia 2020. Entitled
"A Time of Transition and Transformation," the document briefly highlights past accomplishments, lists current priorities and future goals, and has a site-by-site breakdown of planned activities. Some of the current priorities listed include "activities to maintain a safe, secure, and compliant posture; radioactive tank waste stabilization, treatment and disposal; spent (used) nuclear fuel storage, receipt, and disposition," etc.
Two of the major goals for the year 2020 itself are beginning operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Lab (INL) site. Beyond this year, some of the most important goals for the decade include starting radioactive tank waste treatment at the Hanford site, placing Hanford's last two reactors into interim safe storage configurations, and emptying 22 of SRS's 51 underground waste tanks.
In our neck of the woods, starting in 1956, the Portsmouth site along the Scioto River in Pike County, Ohio, served as one of America's three gaseous diffusion plants producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, the site converted to producing uranium for commercial fuel. Nowadays, the site serves as one of DOE's two depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants. The DUF6 is the waste product resulting from uranium enrichment. Attendees at MRMTC's Spring 2019 Meeting learned about the DUF6 Conversion Project. You can view slides from that presentation
here.
Through November 2019, Portsmouth had processed 2,487 cylinders of DUF6. By 2030, DOE-EM plans to have completed the demolition of two of the three former uranium enrichment process buildings on the site. Also by 2030, approximately 9,500 cylinders of DUF6 will be converted with about 18 million gallons of commercial-use hydrogen fluoride (HF) shipped off site. Total site restoration is expected by 2038.
Of course, this "strategic vision" was issued before the coronavirus outbreak, and that will undoubtedly have some impact on DOE-EM's near-term activities. With that being said, DOE as a whole has launched an initiative to help with the coronavirus response. The "COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium" invites scientists and researchers to have priority access to the DOE national labs' supercomputers. More information about the program, including early progress at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab, can be found on
Energywire.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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Lighting Round Edition
With everyone's news feeds most likely filled with coronavirus/COVID-19 news, we decided to make this month's "Nuclear News" a condensed version of all the nuclear news you may have missed in the last month.
Transportation News
Energywire
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"Tribe wins right to fight Bakken oil shipments" - The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community won their case in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing them to hold BNSF Railway Co. accountable for not recognizing their agreement to limit shipments across the Tribe's reservation on Washington state's Fidalgo Island.
UPDATE Energywire: "Railway asks court for 2nd shot at Bakken crude dispute" - BNSF has requested that a larger group of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges reconsider the case after contending that conflicts like this should be resolved by the Surface Transportation Board under the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Termination Act of 1995.
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA): "FRA Office of Railroad Safety Reorganization" - By June 1, 2020, several duties previously managed by the eight FRA regional offices, including field safety inspections, safety operations, complaint responses, etc., will be reassigned to the Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Thanks to Phil Meraz for sharing.
Nuclear Reactor News
Department of Defense (DOD): "DOD Awards Contracts for Development of a Mobile Microreactor" - Three companies have been awarded two-year design-maturation contracts to develop an advanced, mobile, and safe nuclear microreactor for purposes like powering remote operating bases.
Thanks to James Rashilla for sharing this story.
International Joint Commission (IJC): "Water Quality Board Continues Study on Nuclear Decommissioning" - The U.S. - Canada organization formed to resolve and prevent disputes about shared waters will continue to study the water quality implications of decommissioning nuclear power plants located on the shores of the Great Lakes basin.
E&E News: "Lawmakers want fees on industry delayed during outbreak" - Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Tom Carper (Del.), and Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) have requested the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) refrain from collecting fees from licensees for at least 90 days so they can manage their finances in the face of the coronavirus crisis.
Waste Disposal News
Holtec International: "NRC Issues Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Holtec's HI-STORE CISF" - Last month, the NRC released their draft environmental impact statement (EIS), which said that there are no environmental concerns to preclude issuing a license to Holtec for their proposed consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in southeastern New Mexico. The transportation-related aspects of the EIS can be found on pages 2-15, 3-10, 4-9, and 5-19.
Other News
Greenwire: "Bernhardt orders 'disestablishment' of reservation - tribe" - The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts says Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has moved to take the Tribe's land out of trust, claiming the action should be taken because the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston found that the Interior Department had not been authorized to take the land into trust in the first place.
In Memoriam
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| Left to right: Rich Baker, Jim Williams, and Ken Niles |
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Finally, we report with a heavy heart that Rich Baker passed away in early March due to complications from pneumonia. A great friend and colleague to many Midwesterners, Rich was a longtime employee of the Arizona Department of Health Services and a fixture in the NTSF. We leave you with some words from his friends in the West.
"Rich was a steady and dependable voice in the West on both the Western Interstate Energy Board's (WIEB) High-Level Radioactive Waste Committee and the WIPP Technical Advisory Group (TAG). More than that, I and many other called him friend. He was good-humored, easygoing, and had the best Santa Claus beard I've ever seen. He loved his grandchildren more than anything - I'm saddest for them most of all." - Melanie Snyder
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Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on
May 7, 2020
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Missed a newsletter? Past issues are
archived
on the committee's webpage.
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Please do not reproduce or create new content from this material without the prior express written permission of CSG Midwest.
This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award Numbers DE-NE0008604, DE-EM0004869, and DE-EM0005168.
This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.
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