2019 Year in Review Highlights
- Issuing the Department’s interpretation of the term “high-level radioactive waste,” which could offer more options to address tank waste, one of the department’s largest environmental challenges.
- Awarding the first “end-state”-focused contract at Hanford, which defines work in segments easier to track and accomplish, and concentrates effort on mission completion.
- Completing the transfer of K-Basin radioactive sludge at Hanford to safer on-site storage away from the Columbia River.
- Successfully completing an 11-year demonstration of interim salt waste processing capability at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
- Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which also marked receipt of the 12,500th shipment of transuranic waste for disposal at the New Mexico site.
- Completing the waste treatment mission at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at the Idaho cleanup site
- Marking 10 years of operation and reaching the milestone of shipping 10 million tons (out of 16 million tons) of waste from the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings (UMTRA) site and away from the Colorado River in Utah.
- Completing field work and site restoration at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in New York State.
Read the full 2019 Year in Review Report
2018 Year Review
2018 Year in Review Highlights
- Demolishing the 50-foot-tall, 10,000-square-foot vitrification facility at the West Valley Demonstration Project;
- Consolidating more than 400,000 cubic yards of coal ash and ash-contaminated soil at the Savannah River Site (SRS), completed 14 months ahead of schedule, saving $9 million, and resulting in the SRS management and operations contractor receiving the Project Management Institute Award for Project Excellence;
- Completion of site preparation for construction of the Mercury Treatment Facility at the Oak Ridge Site;
- Completion of 13 fiscal 2018 Consent Order milestones at Los Alamos National Laboratory;
- Finishing construction, readiness reviews, and the initiation of disposal in a state-of-the-art waste disposal cell at the Nevada National Security Site;
- Achieving nearly 1 million safe hours without a lost time accident at the Separations Process Research Unit;
- Completion of the existing scope of work in Building 5, 16, and 52/52A areas at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, resulting in the area being restored to a clean and stable site;
- Breaking ground for the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant;
- Exceeding the uranium mill tailings shipment goal at EM’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project by more than 32,200 tons.
2017 Year in Review
2017 Year in Review Highlights
- Resumption of waste emplacement at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant after the facility’s reopening earlier this year;
- Safe and successful treatment of remediated nitrate salt drums at Los Alamos National Laboratory;
- Completion of cleanup activities at Hanford’s 618-10 burial ground;
- Construction of the Savannah River Site’s 33 million-gallon Saltstone Disposal Unit 6;
- Retrieval of about 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste at the Idaho Site’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, bringing a nearly 15-year effort to closure;
- Groundbreaking for the new Mercury Treatment Facility at Oak Ridge, which will enable EM to carry out additional cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex;
- Completion of the Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and GTCC-like waste Report to Congress, moving the Department closer to having a GTCC LLW disposal capability.
- Start of demolition of the West Valley Demonstration Project Vitrification Facility; and
- Completion of demolition of Building G2 at the Separations Process Research Unit.
Read the full 2017 Year in Review Report