The latest DOE EM newsletter has an article on a workshop that we facilitated.
EM Update | Vol. 10, Issue 3 | Jan. 23, 2018
The Technical Information Exchange Meeting held in Augusta, Georgia late last year brought together more than 50 attendees from:
Agencies — DOE, including headquarters, Savannah River Site (SRS), Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site, and Oak Ridge; Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL), U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Japan Atomic Energy Agency, and International Atomic Energy Agency;
Regulators — DOE Office of Environmental Health Security and Safety, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, U.K. Environment Agency; and
Other entities — Savannah River National Laboratory, URS | CH2M Oak Ridge, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Magnox Ltd, and Sellafield Ltd.
Exchange participants identified common critical issues to revisit in working groups. Those groups will identify actions to implement in the next one to two years to help each country establish ISD as a safe and cost-effective decommissioning alternative.
Dr. Anna Clark, Head of NDA’s Decommissioning and Remediation, described the exchange as “excellent” and found it useful to consider the spectrum of decommissioning projects captured under the international ISD umbrella, from leaving a lightly-contaminated pipeline in the subsurface to the permanent entombment of a contaminated facility in concrete.
“Debates about the pros and cons of these different ISD projects have prompted some extremely valuable discussions between me and my colleagues from the U.K., Clark said. “We look forward to sharing our learning as we continue to decommission the U.K. nuclear sites.”
Dr. Frank Gibbs, Vice President of AECL Decommissioning and Waste Management Oversight, said the meeting exceeded his expectations.
“As we saw during the excellent tour of Savannah River Site, effective implementation of ISD offers considerable safety and schedule, and cost benefits,” Gibbs said.
See DOE EM newsletter for more on this meeting. https://goo.gl/WiYNqH