The Department of Energy is considering options for the transition to the end of economic stimulus spending at nuclear weapons sites, including Hanford, said Ines Triay, the DOE assistant secretary for environmental management.
"We are working in partnership with communities to make sure to transition the work force in a way to benefit the community," she said during a visit to the Tri-Cities Thursday and Friday. One of the possibilities that may be considered is early retirement incentives.
The Hanford nuclear reservation has received $1.96 billion to accelerate environmental cleanup through September 2011. The money has been used to create the equivalent of 1,538 full-time jobs for DOE and its prime contractor employees. But with much of the work being done by subcontractors, the number of jobs created is at least double that.
"The recovery act has been a success story when it comes to small businesses," Triay said. Hanford projects are on budget and on schedule, she said.
Since the first money was received at Hanford 13 months ago, $487 million has been spent.
Planned work completed includes 14 of 64 buildings demolished, 114 of 265 ground water monitoring or cleanup wells installed, most of a new disposal cell at the Hanford low-level radioactive waste landfill excavated and 42 of 170 contaminated glove boxes removed from the Plutonium Finishing Plant, according to the DOE progress report on work through March. In addition large quantities of radioactive waste have been repackaged or treated for disposal.
"We're making a tremendous amount of progress," Triay said. "We definitely will meet the goal of 40 percent (reduction in the site's footprint)."
With all of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money scheduled to be spent at DOE environmental cleanup sites in little more than 16 months, DOE will be looking at training and placement programs for workers, she said. It has experience in similar transitions from sites such as Rocky Flats, Colo., where cleanup has been completed, she said.
Each cleanup site will have the chance to propose a transition plan for DOE headquarters review, she said.
"We are trying to be responsive to requests," she said.
There is a benefit to DOE to keep trained workers as an aging work force nears retirement, Triay said. And communities benefit if they can retain both retirees and the newly trained workforce, she said. Hanford employment has been projected to peak this year and then start a decline that would last decades through the completion of environmental cleanup.
Workers also should have opportunities beyond DOE projects with the start of a nuclear renaissance, she said. The training for work in the nuclear energy field and for nuclear weapons environmental cleanup are similar, she said.
Plans to convert newly cleaned up land at Hanford and other DOE sites into energy parks also could provide jobs, she said.
"This community is extremely active and alert to the things it needs to do to partner with the department," she said.
She was in the Tri-Cities to speak at the Washington State University Tri-Cities graduation. But she also met with the Mid-Columbia Energy Initiative Committee, which is working on proposals for clean energy research or production at Hanford as clean up progresses, and toured Infinia, a Kennewick firm designing and manufacturing solar power generators.
Her visit also included an all-hands meeting with the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, which is in charge of Hanford's underground tanks holding 53 million gallons of radioactive waste and the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being built to treat the waste.
DOE appears to have a robust path forward on the last technical issue identified at the vitrification plant, keeping waste well mixed in tanks, she said.
"We have by and large solved the issue," she said. The plan includes installing scopes to monitor for accumulation of waste particles at the bottom of tanks and moving the accumulations when they occur into smaller tanks.
But DOE will need to continue to look at operation efficiencies as it moves toward preparing the plant for startup, or commissioning, she said.
DOE's Office of Environmental Management has not started a facility of the vit plant's magnitude, she said. With commissioning planned to start on the first of the plant's major buildings in 2016, "we already are planning in earnest," she said.
