July 15, 2021 – The Department of Energy and its cleanup contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project has resumed the use of a rail line to ship waste offsite this month.

“The resumption of rail shipments signals a new beginning for the WVDP and will bring many benefits to the future cleanup of the site,” WVDP Director Bryan Bower said. “This work today will help accelerate decommissioning and remediation activities in the very near future.”

WVDP worked with the Buffalo‐Pittsburgh Railroad Administration to rehabilitate the Western New York Nuclear Service Center rail spur and BPRR’s main line. Link to article

July 9, 2021 – Shipments by rail of hazardous material and some low‐level radioactive waste have resumed at the West Valley Demonstration Project.

The nuclear cleanup at the nation’s only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing center in the town of Ashford has been ongoing since the early 1980s.

It is overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Sixty‐eight buildings have now been demolished and removed from the site to safe storage and disposal sites. Much of that waste was shipped by truck. Link to article

July 6, 2021 – EM has updated its popular “By the Numbers” feature, which illustrates cleanup progress at EM sites through quick and clear infographics.

Facts and figures on each major EM site, plus the Savannah River National Laboratory, can be found here. Each site page also features a key look forward to an anticipated achievement over the next decade, as described in more detail in the Strategic Vision 2021‐2031, a blueprint to the program’s anticipated accomplishments over the next decade that will protect the public and environment. Link to update

June 22, 2021 – This is the third workshop in a series hosted by the The West Valley Action Network.
Register for the 7/27 session here: https://bit.ly/3fZkZ2Q

To help stop invisible but long lasting, dangerous radioactivity from getting into our air, water, soil, food and environment join us for a monthly series to learn about the West Valley NY Nuclear Waste Site. One of the most radioactive buildings at that site, and at all the nuclear power and weapons sites, in the country is slated to be demolished starting in 2021. The West Valley Action Network groups are calling for an enclosure during demolition and offsite real‐time, publicly‐reported radiation monitoring to see if radioactivity is getting out. Link to article

June 22, 2021 – Successful collaborations have fueled EM’s progress over the past 18 months, enabling a series of achievements while emphasizing health and safety protections during the COVID‐19 pandemic, Acting Assistant Secretary William “Ike” White told members of the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG) during its annual meeting earlier this month.

During the virtual gathering, White outlined EM’s accomplishments over the past year, including processing more than 1 million gallons of tank waste at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, successful demolition of the Biology Complex at the Y‐12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and significant progress on the tank waste mission at Hanford in Washington state. Link to Update