EM SSAB Hears Cleanup Progress Updates From Avery, Tours Oak Ridge

Stakeholders from eight U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) cleanup sites recently assembled for the EM Site-Specific Advisory Board National Chairs meeting in Oak Ridge. While there, they toured the site. They are pictured in front of the K-25 Viewing Platform under construction.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Stakeholders from eight cleanup sites recently gathered in Oak Ridge for the biannual two-day Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) National Chairs meeting, where they heard cleanup program updates from EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Jeff Avery.

"The advice and the independent perspective that we get from all of you makes a huge difference," Avery told the board members. "You give us a window into the communities that we wouldn't have to understand issues and concerns, and it really makes us a better program. It makes us stronger and it leads to better outcomes."

Members of the EM SSAB also had to the opportunity to communicate their local accomplishments and key items of interest to Avery. This two-way information exchange ensures communities near EM sites have a direct path of communication to senior leadership in addition to their local DOE leaders.

Isotek President and Project Manager Sarah Schaefer talks to Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board members about the Uranium-233 Disposition Project, and how it is helping advance cancer treatment research.

Each spring and fall, members of the local advisory boards that make up the EM SSAB from across the country come together to meet with EM officials and discuss cleanup progress around the complex.

In Oak Ridge, Avery highlighted cleanup work underway at sites nationwide, including the completion of soils cleanup at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge, completion of single-shell tank retrievals in one tank farm and initiation of retrievals in another tank farm at the Hanford Site and completion of Saltstone Disposal Unit 9 ahead of schedule and under budget at the Savannah River Site.

He also cited the Uranium-233 Disposition Project in Oak Ridge, which includes an innovative public-private partnership that allows employees to extract rare medical isotopes from nuclear material before it is processed and disposed of to support next generation cancer research and treatment.

Sarah Schaefer, who leads the project, provided the board members an overview of the history of that program and its potential benefits.

"The Department of Energy has an asset sitting there that was once considered useless," said Schaefer, Isotek president and project manager. "And here we are able to extract it while we are getting rid of the security risk and the safety risk associated with U-233 and giving it to the people who can get it out into the medical-trial community."

Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board members tour the K-25 History Center to learn more about the men and women who built and operated the former uranium enrichment complex. They can be seen through a map that shows the sites that supported the Manhattan Project during World War II.

EM SSAB members also received program updates from EM officials, including Rodrigo Rimando, director of the Office of Technology Operations, Justin Marble, director of the National Transuranic Program, and Julia Shenk, director of the Office of Packaging and Transportation.

The multi-day event also included a full-day tour of the Oak Ridge site and an optional half-day workshop featuring emergency response training from DOE's Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program.

The SSAB was created in 1994 to involve stakeholders more directly in EM's cleanup decisions, providing advice and recommendations from a community perspective on site-specific and cross-complex cleanup activities.

Local site board membership, which reflects a diversity of views, cultures and demographics from affected communities and regions, is composed primarily of people who are directly affected by site cleanup activities. Members include stakeholders from local governments, tribal nations, environmental and civic groups, labor organizations, universities, industry and other interested citizens.

The local boards that make up the EM SSAB are the Hanford Advisory Board, Idaho Cleanup Project Citizens Advisory Board (CAB), Nevada SSAB, Northern New Mexico CAB, Oak Ridge SSAB, Paducah CAB, Portsmouth SSAB and Savannah River Site CAB.

-Contributor: Sara McManamy-Johnson