The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) last year continued ongoing work cleaning up more than a dozen complex sites, all while dealing with the still ongoing pandemic.
EM's 46-page 2021 Year in Review, posted to the DOE website Dec. 30, highlighted 15 cleanup efforts, including those that still continue at the Hanford Site in Washington, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project in Utah.
"I am proud that this year EM again made significant strides in completing key projects, reducing the cleanup footprint, awarding major contracts that accelerate progress, and driving mission innovation and improved performance," EM Senior Advisor William "Ike" White said in the review. "We embarked on an ambitious slate of cleanup priorities this year, and thanks to the dedication of our workforce, we were able to achieve the vast majority of what we set out to do."
What EM managed to achieve was "also the result of the strong ongoing support we received from state, tribal and local partners who share our commitment to cleanup progress," White said.
At Hanford, construction was completed and testing started of all waste treatment and immobilization plant facilities to begin immobilizing tank waste in glass using vitrification according to the review. Workers also completed building and testing of the site's tank-side cesium removal system to begin treating tank waste this year and to build up a supply that will feed directly into the vitrification facility next year. The later project had been an EM priority in 2021.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, workers certified and completed 30 legacy transuranic waste shipments to the site's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a project that was an EM priority in 2021. Workers also completed a planned investigation of 124 unique locations along the DP Middle Road site in the Los Alamos townsite.
At the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, workers reached a cumulative total of more than 12 million tons of residual radioactive material that was shipped from Moab to Crescent Junction, Utah. This project also was an EM priority in 2021.
