Nuclear News & Updates

Collaboration between EM and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International has yielded five new standards and testing practices for fixatives — the latest being approved earlier this summer.

Almost a year after shutting off three vapor treatment units at a former radioactive and hazardous waste landfill at the Idaho National Laboratory Site, analytical data from thousands of vapor samples indicate that cleanup objectives have been achieved.

EM Acting Assistant Secretary William “Ike” White visited the Portsmouth Site last month to get a firsthand look at demolition and disposal progress as part of the ongoing decontamination and decommissioning of the site.

For the first time, workers at EM’s Paducah Site are able to closely examine the primary source of off-site groundwater contamination directly underneath the C-400 Cleaning Building.

Reclassifying dozens of year-round interns as apprentices at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has benefited both the students and the management and operations contractor at the Savannah River Site (SRS).

EM Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant team recently finished startup testing for the Low-Activity Waste Facility's uninterruptible electrical power system, one of the plant's vital safeguards in the unlikely event of temporary power loss.

EM and the management and operations contractor at the Savannah River Site (SRS) have surpassed a major environmental restoration milestone by deactivating and decommissioning (D&D) 50 buildings — more than 1 million square feet of space — since 2008.

Construction is almost complete on a dry-storage area for 1,936 radioactive cesium and strontium capsules currently housed in an underwater basin at the nearby Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF) at the Hanford Site.

Senior research scientist Zeke Unterberg studies ways to optimize the operation and materials for future nuclear fusion reactors.