SRSCRO April 2021 Update

One Step Closer

And a really big step! Plus, it was not an April Fool’s joke!

On April 1, 2021, the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) awarded North Wind Construction Services (NWCS), LLC of Idaho Falls, ID, a contract to design and construct the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative (AMC) Facility. The new facility, to be located on the campus of the University of South Carolina Aiken (UofSC Aiken), will support the missions of EM and the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) while enhancing and expanding collaborations with academia, industries, and other government agencies.

Design is expected to be completed this year and construction of the facility is expected to be completed in 2024. But depending on how quickly the steps fall in place, it could be sooner.

The AMC Facility will provide new laboratory, office, and conference space suitable for advanced manufacturing research and development and will be conducive to laboratory, university, and industry collaboration. Specifically, the AMC Facility will provide administrative, research and manufacturing areas for the design and development of chemical engineering reactions, processes, and materials as well as the production of mechanical and electrical components. The location of the facility was established through a no-cost land lease agreement between the government and the Aiken County Commission for Higher Education (ACCHE).

The new contract is an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity type (IDIQ) contract with a not-to-exceed value of $50 million. The awardee, NWCS, is a Small Business Administration (SBA) certified 8(a) and Small Disadvantaged Business construction firm that is a subsidiary of the Cook Inlet Region, Inc., an Alaska Native Corporation. North Wind is a familiar player around the weapons complex. It runs the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, is lead partner in the landlord services contract for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and does cleanup at the Energy Technology and Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California.

In a recent announcement, Idaho Falls and Idaho National Laboratory have joined together on plans to repurpose fields near a complex similar to AMC into a hub for research institutions after the city received more than $55,000 in grant funding in hopes of expanding businesses and amenities. The city received a grant from Battelle Energy Alliance (also the new contract lead for SRNL) for $55,700 earlier this month to establish plans for an innovation district focused on the Center for Advanced Energy Studies and the regional campuses of Idaho State University and the University of Idaho. Innovation districts are created in or near major cities where specific lines of business create hubs for broader economic development.

They have been a favorite subject of the Brookings Institution. Innovation districts are defined as geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators. Such districts are physically compact, transit-accessible, technically wired and offer mixed-use housing for both office and retail. Rather than focus on discrete industries, innovation districts represent an intentional effort to create new products, technologies and market solutions through the convergence of disparate sectors and specializations – for example, information technology combining with bioscience, energy, or education.

In one of their previous briefs Brookings looked at the DOE labs’ ability to engage fully with the regional economies in which they are located. In this article, it suggests that in order to improve the impact of the national labs, DOE and Congress should:

Improve the labs as an economic asset
Open labs to small- and medium-sized businesses
Increase labs’ relevance to regional and metropolitan clusters
Provide greater flexibility in oversight and funding

The AMC announcement this month checks most of the boxes above. And, as the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program stated in their 2014 paper, The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America, “the real challenge is how each community marshals resources in a deliberate and customized way to capitalize on advantages and realize the promise of productive, inclusive, and sustainable growth”.

Now is the time for local community leaders to start a dialogue on their next steps to harness the AMC opportunity and leverage its regional benefits, such as a designated innovation district (like our friends at Idaho Falls) around the AMC facility.

The SRS Budget Process

Each year the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) Program develops its budget request for the fiscal year two years beyond the current fiscal year (FY), incorporating budget requests from DOE field offices to develop the EM program budget request to the President.

On April 6, 2021, the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) and the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) co-hosted a “Budget 101” webinar. It was an opportunity to learn (or get a refresher) about the DOE budget timeline, federal appropriations, and how local governments and communities (stakeholders) can engage in those processes. As part of this webinar, several links to documents of interest were made available and can be found below.

The EM budget must progress through DOE, other executive branch agencies, and Congress; those entities decide which cleanup activities to fund at a given site. Thus, stakeholders affected by the EM cleanup mission have multiple opportunities to provide input regarding state compliance obligations and cleanup priorities. The sites should submit stakeholder’s input as supplemental data to the budget submittal to headquarters.

This link provides the recent input letter from the SRS Community Reuse Organization (SRSCRO) outlining their FY23 budget priorities. Involvement of stakeholders in the budget process develops more trust through participation with the sites, and stakeholder participation helps to find common priorities in the budget process.

Additional Budget Resources:

Women with STEM Careers Speak on Rural Opportunities

Students near rural Allendale, SC were inspired by women making a difference through their science and technology careers. High school and college students participated in the first University of South Carolina (USC) Salkehatchie Women in STEM event held during March 2021.

What do these women know that might launch more young students from rural regions into careers filled with similar purpose and opportunity?

Allendale, SC is located on the southern border of the Savannah River Site (SRS). This is where USC Salkehatchie is advancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degree programs for rural students. The Women in STEM event is just one of the university’s new outreach plans coordinated by Ms. Holly McCrary. Holly recently joined the staff of USC Salkehatchie as the new STEM Program Coordinator serving both the Allendale and Walterboro campuses of USC Salkehatchie.

In her first few weeks on the job, Holly put her scientific research training and classroom teacher experience to work for the community. She arranged the first USC Salkehatchie Women in STEM event that initially reached over 1500 people and is still available for viewing here. The Facebook Live event features a diverse group of women making a difference in the rural region through their science and technology work. Panelists include women working at SRS, as professionals at local power and water utility companies, and as professors in STEM fields. The women speak with experience on every aspect of entering STEM career fields including the variety of technical degrees available. Panelists have earned degrees from South Carolina State University, The Citadel, Clemson University, USC Salkehatchie, Virginia Tech and Jackson State University. Their messages clearly resonated with high school and college students in attendance, both in-person and virtually. Several participants began enrolling in STEM fields of study at USC Salkehatchie following the event.

Connecting students to STEM learning experiences and careers is not only Holly McCrary’s job, it is a passion. Holly has also developed a new USC Salkehatchie seminar that will introduce students to local science and technology careers through experiences, speakers and while earning college course credit. Students are already enrolling for the new Summer 2021 program.

USC Salkehatchie’s focus on STEM programs is strengthened by the Workforce Opportunities in Regional Careers (WORC) grant programs administered by the SRSCRO. As a WORC partner, USC Salkehatchie offers student scholarships for STEM degree fields. WORC is funded by the Department of Energy Environmental Management (DOE-EM) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) offices at the Savannah River Site. The purpose of WORC is to help local citizens develop STEM skills needed to support long-term missions at SRS. These same STEM skills are needed across the region, nation, and the world. To learn more about WORC click here. To learn more about USC Salkehatchie STEM program opportunities click here.

In This Issue

One Step Closer

The SRS Budget Process

Women with STEM

Careers Speak on Rural Opportunities

Private Sector Workforce Growing

In addition to the SRS and Cyber Security workforce needs, recent announcements on the private sector side highlights the competition for a growing workforce opportunity in the region.

Recently, Amazon announced the plans for an 800-employee distribution facility and accompanies a 600,000 square-foot, multi-level distribution facility already being constructed. It could bring an additional 1,000 jobs. “This project represents the largest single investment and job creation in any commercial project we have announced,” said Robbie Bennett, Executive Director of the Development Authority of Columbia County.

Earlier, SouthernCarolina Alliance announced the creation of the Agriculture Technology Campus. It is a joint venture project between Mastronardi, Clear Water Farms, LiDestri Food and Drink, and GEM Opportunity Zone Fund and will be a state-of-the-art 1,000-acre agriculture technology campus in Hampton County. The combined $314 million investment is expected to create more than 1,500 new, permanent jobs over the next five years and up to 1,200 seasonal jobs.

Will Williams, of the Economic Development Partnership announced that 450 new jobs are coming to the area with a new investment from Generac power systems. The company is based in Wisconsin, and builds backup generators as well as engine and battery powered tools and equipment. The new investment will operate out of a vacant facility in Trenton, South Carolina.

The latest edition of Georgia Trend magazine featured an article on the economic expansion in the area. “Almost all of our industries have some form of expansion happening now,” says Cal Wray, president of the Augusta Economic Development Authority. A growing economy has created challenges including a lack of available warehousing space. “that’s a good and a bad problem to have”, Cal noted.

Mars Perseverance

Fun Facts

1. The name Perseverance was chosen by a seventh grader named Alexander Mather, who won a nationwide contest held by NASA to name the 2020 rover.

2. Perseverance was a mission with "orbital constraint," meaning that its launch to Mars depended on planetary alignment between Earth and Mars, which takes place during three crucial weeks every 26 months.

3. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover successfully landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021! Perseverance made the 64-million-mile journey to Mars in about six months.

4. NASA previously sent five rovers to Mars - Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity. Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still operating on the Red Planet today.

5. Around 90 percent of the team behind Perseverance started working from home earlier in March in response to the spread of the novel coronavirus, which makes the Mars 2020 mission the only one to go through final prep with a virtual remote team.

6. Perseverance's destination is the Jezero Crater, a 500-meter-deep crater located in a basin slightly north of the Martian equator.

7. The Jezero Crater once housed a lake estimated to have dried out 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. Therefore, it is the ideal location for Perseverance to hunt for signs of past microbial life.

8. The mission will also test out conditions for possible human exploration of Mars by trialing a method of producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, characterizing environmental conditions such as water and dust on Mars, and looking for resources.

9. The entry and landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars is referred to as the, 'seven minutes of terror.' That's how long it takes for the rover to get from the top of the Martian atmosphere and down to the surface.

10. It then takes an additional 14 minutes for the team to receive a signal from the rover on Mars, considering there's a lag since Mars is millions of miles away.

11. Once on Mars, the team will communicate with Perseverance via the Deep Space Network, a global network of antennas that were built in the 1960's.

12. The Perseverance rover will collect at least 20 samples from Mars using a handy drill, literally attached to the robot's arm.

13. The rock samples will be stored away in tubes in a well-identified place on the Martian surface and left there to be returned to Earth by a future sample return mission to the Red Planet.

14. Perseverance isn't venturing to Mars on its own. The Ingenuity helicopter will hitch a ride with the rover and allow NASA to test out its ability to fly a helicopter on a planet other than Earth for the first time.

15. The team behind Perseverance redesigned its wheels, giving the rover narrower wheels than its predecessor Curiosity, but bigger in diameter and made of thicker aluminum in order to handle the wear and tear of driving around the Martian terrain.

16. Perseverance will carry a highly skilled team of detectives on board, its instruments S.H.E.R.L.O.C., (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) and WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering instrument) will look for microscopic clues in Martian rock.

The 2021 SRSCRO meeting schedule is available here.

Closing Thoughts

One thing you will probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget. -- Franklin P. Jones

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

-- Mark Twain

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.

-- Gordon R. Dickson

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.

-- Joseph Conrad

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. -- Isaac Asimov

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all. -- Rita Mae Brown

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. – Katharine Hepburn

Contact Information

SRSCRO, PO Box 696, Aiken, SC 29802

Staff:

Rick McLeod | President/CEO | 803.508.7402

Mindy Mets | Director of Regional Workforce Programs |803.508.7403

Amy Merry | Administrative & Business Manger | 803.508.7401

Kim Saxon | Assistant Coordinator | 803.508.7656

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