[DOE LETTERHEAD]
July 20, 2001
The Honorable John T. Conway
Chairman
Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board
625 Indiana Avenue, NW, Suite
700
Washington, D.C. 20004-2901
Dear Mr. Chairman:
The purpose of this letter is
to formally notify you of a delay which has occurred in completion of one of
our commitments contained in the Department’s 2000-1 Implementation Plan (IP), Stabilization
and Storage of Nuclear Material. As
anticipated and discussed in our briefing to you on June 22, 2001, the
following commitment has since been missed:
114 Package aluminum alloys at Richland
for disposition to Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Brush and package
remaining alloys at Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP): Due June 2001
The enclosed letter from the
Richland Operations Office (RL) dated June 29, 2001, gives a detailed
description of the Site’s progress in stabilizing and packaging the alloy
materials. In summary, the 31 alloys to
be dispositioned at WIPP have been packaged into pipe overpack containers. However, at the time the IP was last
revised, PFP identified 42 alloy items to be brushed and packaged to meet
DOE-STD-3013 by June 30, 2001. This
portion of the milestone remains incomplete.
Of the 42 items identified
for brushing and packaging to meet DOE-S TD-30 13, 11 have been brushed and
packaged into inner 3013 containers.
They will be welded into outer 3013 containers by the end of July 2001. Sampling of the remaining 31 items showed that
they were not suitable for brushing and packaging, and that they need to be
thermally stabilized as oxides.
Currently, oxides cannot be
packaged at RL to meet the DOE-STD-3013 criteria until a replacement for the
Super-critical Fluid Extraction (SFE) moisture measurement technique is
approved, qualified and operational at that Site. The Site expects to have a new method operational within the next
three to six months, and will complete stabilization and packaging of these
items within 60 days after the method is qualified and operational.
Several other sites have
milestones which are potentially impacted by the retraction of the SFE
technique. Those longer term milestones
are still being evaluated for possible workarounds and to determine the scope
of any necessary delays. We will keep
you informed as additional information becomes available.
We continue to closely track
progress on all Recommendation 2000-1 commitments and will keep you and your
staff apprized of our progress. If you
have any questions, please contact me at (202) 586-5151.
Sincerely,
David G. Huizenga
Deputy Assistant
Secretary
for Integration and Disposition
Office of Environmental
Management
cc:
M. Whitaker, S-3.1
Note: The enclosure is
available in [PDF].