Roger Jarrell, Senior Advisor to the Energy Secretary for EM, toured cleanup operations at the Hanford Site this month. Picture above, Office of River Protection 's (ORP) Dr. Sahid Smith, chemical engineer for the Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment System, explains testing of the full-scale vessel and pulse-jet mixers for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) to Federal Project Director and Assistant Manager Bill Hamel, Bechtel's WTP Project Manager Peggy McCullough, contractor AECOM's Gary Beyer and Jarrell.
Roger Jarrell met with tribal leaders at the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center following his visit to Hanford. Pictured with Jarrell (third from right) are, left to right, Patrick Wyena and Rex Buck of the Wanapum Tribe; Armand Minthorn and Leland Bill, Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation; and Asa Washines of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.
Jarrell toured the Savannah River Site (SRS) in mid-July and met with community leaders and SRS stakeholders. SWPF testing and commissioning is more than halfway complete, and the facility is on schedule to begin operating in December 2018.
The new 32.8-million gallon SDU 6 is more than 10 times larger than the six previously constructed Saltstone vaults and is the first of seven planned to store the remaining tank waste. See the related story on the SDU 6 in this newsletter issue. “I’m excited to see all of the positives here in accelerating DOE’s cleanup priorities," Jarrell said. “There is a lot of good, tried-and-true work going on at SRS to support the classic EM cleanup completion story." Pictured, left to right, are SRS Manager Jack Craig; Jarrell; DOE-Savannah River Assistant Manager for Waste Disposition Jim Folk; Liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) Waste Treatment Facility Manager; and SRR Project Integration Manager Kim Hauer.
Cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT’s Director Dennis Carr (left) and X-326 Process Building Deactivation Director Gary Hazlewood show Jarrell, center, posters depicting deactivation steps underway in a former uranium enrichment facility at EM’s Portsmouth Site. Jarrell toured the southern Ohio site and received updates on decontamination and decommissioning work.
The robotics training center at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon is preparing cleanup personnel through the use of remote robots and virtual reality training, simulating work to be done in the former uranium enrichment plant being decontaminated and decommissioned.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
