PHOENIX - Officials from EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office emphasized the theme of “One PPPO" during a panel discussion last week at the 2017 Waste Management Symposium.
PPPO Manager Robert Edwards stressed the ongoing collaboration between the Portsmouth and Paducah sites as they work towards the cleanup of DOE EM’s last two gaseous diffusion plants, as well as conversion of the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) cylinders at the two sites. Working as a cohesive unit helps the sites be safer, more efficient, and allows quick application of lessons learned, Edwards said.
At Portsmouth, ‘We Have The Plan’
At Portsmouth, DOE Site Lead Joel Bradburne said he is confident the site had a solid plan to get the plant to final cleanup.
Bradburne listed a series of “check marks" to illustrate his point, such as completion of a lifecycle baseline, regulatory approvals, stakeholder consensus, a technological approach, and a focused workforce as aligned to reach the end goal.
Jeff Stevens, deputy project manager for Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LLC, said he agrees Portsmouth is positioned for closure. Giving an update on FBP’s progress, Stevens said the contractor expects to bring the first cell of the X-326 process building to criticality incredible and ready for demolition this spring. In addition, FBP will continue work in the second process building, X-333, and maintain environmental remediation progress in treating contaminated groundwater. Stevens also noted the need to maintain a rapid pace on the construction of a planned on-site waste disposal facility as key to the cleanup project staying on schedule.
Paducah Has ‘More to Do Than We Have Done’
DOE Paducah Site Lead Jennifer Woodard said the lessons learned from Portsmouth were invaluable as Paducah begins the planning efforts to reach a comprehensive lifecycle baseline. Woodard described the complexity of the cleanup at Paducah by saying we have “more to do than we have done." Paducah has an extensive environmental remediation scope that was being performed while uranium enrichment operations continued through 2013.
After DOE received the plant in October 2014, Paducah has been focused on maintaining the remediation effort, while re-sizing the newly returned plant facilities, the equivalent of a small city, to be efficient for cleanup activities. As an example, Woodard described a revised approach to the C-400 building cleanup. C-400 was the primary source of TCE contamination at the site. Prior to the return of the facilities a number of actions were segmented to reach the TCE sources while the building was occupied. Now that the building is no longer in use, a new approach to reach the source directly under the building is being described as cleaning up the whole city block is being proposed.
Woodard also expressed the need for investment in infrastructure maintenance as a priority for the site. Many of the buildings at the site are over 60 years old, creating both safety and long term cost issues.
Bob Smith, project manager with Fluor Federal Services, provided more details on the progress at the Paducah site. FFS has completed numerous deactivation activities, including the reroofing of 75 acres of process building roofs, finishing consolidation of switchyards, and positioning the recycling of large quantities of R-114 stored onsite.
Smith also provided more specifics on the acceleration approach to the C-400. Workers are focused on cleaning out 81,000 square feet of building space, which will allow for a targeted sampling event through the floor of the building. This will give the site access to previously unknown groundwater data, allowing for a more effective cleanup of the TCE source.
Adding another dynamic to the PPPO session was a presentation from Tammy Courtney, project manager for Swift and Staley, LLC, on infrastructure services at the site. PPPO has a unique contract arrangement at their D&D sites, using a small business prime contractor specifically to handle infrastructure for DOE and all of the resident contractors.
Courtney laughingly told the audience that we aren’t just “road and commodes", then proceeded to detail a laundry list of accomplishments over the past year that included performing classification review on over 8.6 million pages of records, providing training services for 1,700 site employees, and maintaining an IT system that processed 18 million e-mails last year.
DUF6 Culture Now Seven Lines, One Project
In addition to remediation and demolition work at PPPO, the two DUF6 conversion facilities are primed to see significant action this year. Reinhard Knerr, federal project director for the DUF6 plants at both Portsmouth and Paducah, echoed the “One PPPO" theme by describing a re-alignment of the plant culture as seven lines, one project. The Portsmouth DUF6 plant has three conversion lines, while the Paducah plant has four conversion lines. Bringing the plants together as one project allowed for multiple safety and maintenance corrective actions to be put in place and experiences to be shared between the sites.
Knerr also introduced the new DUF6 contractor Mid-America Conversion Services, led by industry veteran Alan Parker.
Although describing himself as new to the group, Parker, president and program Manager for MCS, said he has found the cohesiveness of the PPPO group to be inclusive. After giving an overview of MCS and its approach to operating the DUF6 plants, Parker expressed confidence in the plants’ personnel to get two additional lines running at Paducah by June 2017 and Portsmouth restarted by September 2017.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
