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Along with automobile makers and banks, a number of senators whose districts include U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contaminated sites are asking for stimulus money to rejuvenate local economies with cleanup work and perhaps, freshly-cleaned land for industrial development. According to the DOE, spending more and completing cleanup would enable the government to decrease the "footprint" or overall size of each site, releasing more property for development. The letter asking for the funding was signed by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Jim Risch, D-Idaho; and Tom Udall, D-N.M. Sen. Patty Murray, D.-Wash.; is supporting boosting cleanup spending nationally by $6 billion. Since the mid-1990's, the DOE has already spent more than $7.3 billion on environmental cleanup nationally each year.

"Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and GOP Sen. George V. Voinovich are locking arms politically to go after federal cash to help fund the cleanup of the site of a closed uranium-enrichment plant in southern Ohio. Ohio's U.S. senators asked key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week to come up with all the money President Barack Obama asked for in his proposed 2011 budget for cleanup and related efforts at the Piketon site: $479million total, including $416million for direct decontamination and cleanup efforts. Voinovich is a member of the appropriations committee. This is separate from ongoing work by USEC, a private company, to try to build a commercial enrichment plant on the site. Commercial uranium-enrichment plants produce fuel for nuclear-power plants. The old Piketon plant produced fuel for nuclear-power plants before it closed in 2001, but in the Cold War, it also made weapons-grade uranium for the country's atomic-weapons program. Congress allocated $303million for the cleanup in the 2010 budget, and the Piketon cleanup got an additional $118 million from the stimulus package."

Project Scope A National Academies committee will provide technical and strategic advice to the DOE-EM's Office of Engineering and Technology to support the development and implementation of its cleanup technology roadmap. Specifically, the study will identify: o Principal science and technology gaps and their priorities for the cleanup program based on previous National Academies reports, updated and extended to reflect current site conditions and EM priorities and input form key external groups, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Environmental Protection Agency, and state regulatory agencies. o Strategic opportunities to leverage research and development from other DOE programs (e.g., in the Office of Science, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and the National Nuclear Security Administration), other federal agencies (e.g., Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency), universities, and the private sector. o Core capabilities at the national laboratories that will be needed to address EM's long-term, high-risk cleanup challenges, especially at the four laboratories located at the large DOE sites (Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Savannah River National Laboratory). o The infrastructure at these national laboratories and at EM sites that should be maintained to support research, development, and bench and pilot scale demonstrations of technologies for the EM cleanup program, especially in radiochemistry.

"The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has approved a new component to clean-up efforts at the U.S. Department of Energy's former Gaseous Diffusion Plant. On Tuesday, the state EPA said it has approved plans from the U.S. Department of Energy that will allow proper cleanup and, in some cases, tearing down of buildings that were used to produce enriched uranium until 2001. Currently, the Department of Energy is conducting cleanup of soil and water at the site under a 1989 agreement, but the new agreement allows it to begin decontamination and decommissioning work in the buildings on the site as well. The Energy department committed $303 million in cleanup funds for 2010, and an additional $118 million was awarded from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's office said $500 million is set aside for cleanup efforts in the 2011 Energy department budget."

The Hanford nuclear site was established in 1943 in the town of Hanford, Washington along the Columbia River. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. The plant's waste disposal procedures were woefully inadequate. To this day, millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste remains at the site and comprises the largest Hanford decomission activities 1964-71environmental clean up in Uited States history since being decommissioned between 1964 and 1971. On September 30, 2009: U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) a senior member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, announced that the final version of a spending bill that funds Hanford cleanup will include more than $87 million more for cleanup than the President's Fiscal Year 2010 budget request. Murray, who was part of the Conference Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee that crafted the final legislation, fought for the inclusion of the additional funding after the House version of the bill cut Hanford funding to $51.8 million below the President's budget request. The additional funding secured by Murray will go primarily toward groundwater cleanup and K Basin sludge treatment and disposal.

The Hanford nuclear site was established in 1943 in the town of Hanford, Washington along the Columbia River. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. The plant's waste disposal procedures were woefully inadequate. To this day, millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste remains at the site and comprises the largest Hanford decomission activities 1964-71environmental clean up in Uited States history since being decommissioned between 1964 and 1971. On September 30, 2009: U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) a senior member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, announced that the final version of a spending bill that funds Hanford cleanup will include more than $87 million more for cleanup than the President's Fiscal Year 2010 budget request. Murray, who was part of the Conference Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee that crafted the final legislation, fought for the inclusion of the additional funding after the House version of the bill cut Hanford funding to $51.8 million below the President's budget request. The additional funding secured by Murray will go primarily toward groundwater cleanup and K Basin sludge treatment and disposal.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is proposing that $6 billion to $7 billion be included in a national economic recovery package for cleanup work at Hanford and other Department of Energy nuclear sites. That's in line with a proposal that's outlined in a DOE report that covers one option for the Obama administration to consider. The DOE proposal calls for $6 billion to be spent to significantly reduce the size of large contaminated sites such as Hanford and finish cleanup at smaller sites. The proposal also calls for DOE cleanup sites to be developed into energy parks. "To make progress ... we need to put in enough funds to reduce the size of the sites," Murray said Tuesday during a Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing for Peter Orszag, nominated for director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Members of a committee helping to oversee cleanup of nuclear waste at the site of the now-closed Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant here met with their counterparts who worked with the cleanup of the former Feed Material Production Center in Fernald, near Cincinnati. The Fernald plant, built by the Atomic Energy Commission, produced more than 500 million pounds of uranium metal from 1952 to 1989, said Johnny Reising, site director for the Fernald closing project for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Cleanup of the radioactive waste byproducts, stored in metal cylinders above ground, began in the 1980s and, after nearly 25 years, is now completed. The cost was nearly $4.5 billion.

"La Grande is about 130 miles southeast of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Still, a proposed U.S. Department of Energy plan for the cleanup of radioactive waste at Hanford has people in the Grande Ronde Valley alarmed. Alarmed because the plan could result in Union County residents being exposed to additional radiation. This point was made boldly Monday at a hearing conducted at Eastern Oregon University by the U.S. Department of Energy. The hearing was conducted to solicit public comment on a draft environmental impact statement detailing alternatives being considered for the next step in the cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford. A major concern of the plan is that it would result in the U.S. Department of Energy lifting its moratorium on shipments of radioactive waste to Hanford from other DOE sites. The moratorium, in place since 1980, would likely end in 2022 if the U.S. Department of Energy plan goes into effect."

Washington state and federal officials announced a court-enforceable schedule Tuesday for cleaning up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, ending more than two years of negotiations that followed dozens of missed deadlines. The sprawling Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created near the Tri-Cities as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II, has been a focus of extensive cleanup efforts for two decades. In that time, the pact that governs cleanup has been changed more than 400 times. Washington state sued the Energy Department last November over missed cleanup deadlines, though the two sides settled part of the lawsuit in February. That agreement accelerated cleanup of contaminated groundwater along the neighboring Columbia River, among other things, and both sides said it would shrink the 586-square-mile site to just 75 square miles by 2015.

Work has started to make Hanford's massive landfill for low-level radioactive waste even larger. Improvements also are being made to help the landfill, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, or ERDF, keep up with the accelerated pace of environmental cleanup at the nuclear reservation. Cleanup work at Hanford is increasing with the infusion of $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money. With more cleanup work comes the need for more waste disposal capacity, so the stimulus funding includes about $100 million for work at ERDF. "The pace of cleanup at Hanford is totally linked to the capabilities of ERDF," said Dave Einan, an environmental engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the Department of Energy project.

"Cleanup efforts could put more trucks carrying radioactive material on area highways A hearing Monday on radioactive waste cleanup options for the nation's largest nuclear facility drew close to 70 area residents - and a state Department of Energy official who said most of the federal government's cleanup proposals are fatally flawed. The public hearing in Eugene, one of more than a half-dozen scheduled throughout the Pacific Northwest, was organized by the U.S. Department of Energy to present options for dealing with the nation's biggest cleanup project at the Hanford site in Washington state. The proposal could result in more nuclear waste being transported on Interstate 5 and other regional highways."

The Department of Energy plans to spend less money in coming months at its environmental cleanup sites including Hanford than was approved by Congress in a continuing budget resolution for spending through early March. DOE's goal is to be conservative and not overspend in the first five months of the year as the funding amount for the rest of the year still unclear. DOE will use the administration request for funding in fiscal 2009, which would cut annual spending on DOE cleanup nationwide from a little more than $5.7 billion in the fiscal year 2008 budget to $5.5 billion. The fiscal year started Oct. 1. At Hanford, the budget for cleanup under the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office would drop from the $886.5 million approved for fiscal 2008 to $851.8 million under the administration's request for fiscal 2009. That's a decrease of $34.7 million.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has notified the Department of Energy that they must immediately resume cleanup activities at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., or face escalating penalties. A federal facilities agreement was signed between EPA, DOE and California state agencies in June 1988. The agreement outlines DOE's responsibilities and milestones for addressing site contamination. DOE has failed to operate numerous groundwater and soil vapor treatment facilities and associated wells -- an integral part of cleanup activities at the site. While pump-and-treat systems have been shutdown, site contamination has spread laterally and vertically, resulting in a larger volume of contaminated groundwater and increasing timeframes for completing the overall cleanup.

The U.S. Department of Energy is collecting comments over the next few weeks on its new timeline for cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. At meetings in Washington and Oregon federal officials will outline the new proposed schedule. It sets a timeline for cleaning up underground tanks of radioactive sludge and building a massive factory called the "vitrification" or "vit plant" to treat that waste. Carrie Meyer is a spokeswoman for DOE. She says the original cleanup and construction schedule drafted in 1989 wasn't realistic.

The U.S. Department of Energy is collecting comments over the next few weeks on its new timeline for cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. At meetings in Washington and Oregon federal officials will outline the new proposed schedule. It sets a timeline for cleaning up underground tanks of radioactive sludge and building a massive factory called the "vitrification" or "vit plant" to treat that waste. Carrie Meyer is a spokeswoman for DOE. She says the original cleanup and construction schedule drafted in 1989 wasn't realistic.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate environmental cleanup work and create thousands of jobs across 12 states. Projects identified for funding will focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing former weapons complex facilities. "These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the cold war era," said Secretary Chu. "It reflects our commitment to future generations as well as to help local economies get moving again." These projects and the new funding are managed by the Department's Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for the risk reduction and cleanup of the environmental legacy from the nation's nuclear weapons program, one of the largest, most diverse and technically complex environmental programs in the world. The states and DOE sites that will receive this funding include:

Since 2006, GAO has issued 12 reports examining DOE's contract and project management. Two of these reports examined the performance of DOE's largest construction projects-nearly all of which are managed by NNSA or EM-and EM's largest nuclear waste cleanup projects. These reports documented that the cost increases and schedule delays that have occurred for most of these projects have been the result of inconsistent application of project management tools and techniques on the part of both DOE and its contractors. Specifically, GAO reported in March 2007 that 8 of the 10 major NNSA and EM construction projects that GAO reviewed had exceeded the initial cost estimates for completing these projects-in total, DOE added nearly $14 billion to these initial estimates. GAO also reported that 9 of the 10 major construction projects were behind schedule-in total, DOE added more than 45 years to the initial schedule estimates. In particular, the Waste Treatment Plant project at the Hanford Site had exceeded its original cost estimate by almost $8 billion and experienced schedule delays of over 8 years. GAO also reported in September 2008 that 9 of the 10 major EM cleanup projects GAO reviewed had experienced cost increases and schedule delays-in total, DOE estimated that it needed an additional $25 billion to $42 billion to complete these cleanup projects over the initial cost estimates and an additional 68 to 111 more years than initially estimated. In addition, GAO has issued a number of other reports over the past 3 years on specific

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is getting nearly $2 billion in stimulus money for job-generating projects, but the top watchdog over the former nuclear weapons production site questions whether the extra money will reduce cleanup delays. The U.S. Department of Energy is using the money, about equal to Hanford's annual budget, for scores of construction and cleanup projects at one of the world's largest hazardous-waste sites. The projects include cleaning contaminated groundwater and buried waste along the Columbia River, a high priority for Oregon and Washington regulators. But the department isn't accelerating long-delayed cleanup of 177 leak-prone underground tanks filled with 53 million gallons of radioactive sludge, notes Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.

Bricks and mortar and other materials that built Cold War success are now filling up Oak Ridge landfills, which is why those landfills keep getting bigger. A major expansion is under way at the Department of Energy's nuclear landfill, with similar projects getting started at a series of sanitary landfills -- which receive construction rubble and other non-radioactive wastes generated during demolition and cleanup projects. Bechtel Jacobs, DOE's cleanup manager, said a significant milestone was achieved in December when the construction team completed installation of a high-density geomembrane on Cell 5 -- a new cell that's supposed to add 465,000 cubic yards of disposal space at the landfill for low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials, bringing the total to 1.7 million cubic yards.

Bricks and mortar and other materials that built Cold War success are now filling up Oak Ridge landfills, which is why those landfills keep getting bigger. A major expansion is under way at the Department of Energy's nuclear landfill, with similar projects getting started at a series of sanitary landfills -- which receive construction rubble and other non-radioactive wastes generated during demolition and cleanup projects. Bechtel Jacobs, DOE's cleanup manager, said a significant milestone was achieved in December when the construction team completed installation of a high-density geomembrane on Cell 5 -- a new cell that's supposed to add 465,000 cubic yards of disposal space at the landfill for low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials, bringing the total to 1.7 million cubic yards.

After making plans for more than 20 years, the first ton of radioactive dirt will be removed from the nuclear waste dump in Parks this summer for the much anticipated 3-year, $76 million cleanup by the Army Corps of Engineers. The removal of 50,000 tons of nuclear-contaminated soil at what is officially known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area is the last vestige of the nuclear legacy from two former nuclear fuel plants in Apollo and Parks that operated from 1957 to mid-1980s. The plants, owned by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) and later the Atlantic Richfield Co. and Babcock & Wilcox (B&W), produced nuclear fuel for submarines and power plants as well as a range of nuclear products for the U.S. government and others. Moving on hasn't come quickly or cheaply. Lawsuits for personal injury and contamination, cleanups and government payments to contaminated workers have topped $267 million in more than two decades.

After making plans for more than 20 years, the first ton of radioactive dirt will be removed from the nuclear waste dump in Parks this summer for the much anticipated 3-year, $76 million cleanup by the Army Corps of Engineers. The removal of 50,000 tons of nuclear-contaminated soil at what is officially known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area is the last vestige of the nuclear legacy from two former nuclear fuel plants in Apollo and Parks that operated from 1957 to mid-1980s. The plants, owned by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) and later the Atlantic Richfield Co. and Babcock & Wilcox (B&W), produced nuclear fuel for submarines and power plants as well as a range of nuclear products for the U.S. government and others. Moving on hasn't come quickly or cheaply. Lawsuits for personal injury and contamination, cleanups and government payments to contaminated workers have topped $267 million in more than two decades.

"The Energy Department will reduce the size of former nuclear waste sites needing environmental cleanup by 40 percent by the end of 2011, fueled largely by Recovery Act funding, a top official said. The footprint of Cold War-era sites to be cleaned up will be reduced from 900 square miles to 540 square miles during fiscal 2011, said Ines Triay, assistant Energy secretary of environmental management. The department's goal is to clean up 90 percent of contaminated areas by 2015. Energy received $6 billion in Recovery Act funds to accelerate cleanup efforts. To date, $5.6 billion in stimulus funds has been obligated and $1.7 billion has been spent, Triay told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces at an April 21 hearing. Stimulus funds will be used for many projects: Accelerate by seven years the removal of radioactive waste at 11 sites; remove 2 million tons of waste material from the uranium mill in Moab, Utah; and build the infrastructure required to support high-level waste processing operations. In addition, Recovery Act funds will be used to speed up completion of cleanup activities at three small sites: Brookhaven National Laboratory and Separations Process Research Unit in New York, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California."