22 Feb (NucNet): The US Department of Energy (DOE) has made “historic progress” in cleaning up nuclear contamination leftover from the Cold War, reducing the total footprint by nearly 75 percent and permanently cleaning up 690 square miles of contaminated land – an area more than 30 times the size of Manhattan, energy secretary Steven Chu has said.
In a letter to DOE staff Mr Chu, who has said he will not stand for a second term in the job, said despite this progress, environmental clean-up projects still face “considerable technical and project management challenges”.
As an example, the waste treatment and immobilisation plant at the DOE’s Hanford site in Washington state is the most complex and largest nuclear project in history, he said.
Mr Chu said: “The scientific, engineering and management reform of the waste treatment plant will continue, and I am optimistic that many of the issues that have been plaguing this project for over a half a dozen years will soon be resolved.”
Hanford was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project to produce the first atomic bomb. It was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
Mr Chu also said that over the last four years, more than 100,000 kilogrammes of weapons grade uranium from the former Soviet Union have been down-blended and converted into peaceful purposes like US civilian nuclear reactors.
He said about 10 percent of America’s electricity comes from uranium that once threatened the US as part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Mr Chu said he is leaving the DOE to return to an academic life of teaching and research. He plans to stay on as energy secretary at least until the end of February.
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