Below are articles and other news published since the last West Valley Citizen Task Force Meeting. They relate to the West Valley Demonstration Project, nuclear waste cleanup or are otherwise relevant or of potential interest to stakeholders interested in the Project. After each Citizen Task Force Meeting, these articles are compiled into a single document and may be found with the meeting materials for that month.
August 1, 2019 – The Cattaraugus County Industrial Development Agency Board of Directors voted on Tuesday to enact a six-month moratorium on new solar farm applications.
The moratorium comes after the approval of five solar farms in the county over the past three years. Three projects have been in Olean. The IDA also has applications for proposed solar farms in Portville and West Valley. Link to article
August 1, 2019 – Windmills are beautiful. As a lover of Lake Erie’s bluffs, beaches and sunsets, as a former Bennett Beach lifeguard and Learzaks patron, as a current property owner on its shores, I was astounded to read:
On Sept. 19, the Erie County Legislature’s Energy and Environment Committee has scheduled a hearing to consider a bill by Legislators Lynne Dixon and John Mills condemning wind turbines on the lake. Link to article
July 30, 2019 – Trained divers working on behalf of EM recently went underwater to clean and inspect a fire water storage tank at the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP).
“Our team has planned extensively for this underwater work, and conducted several confined space rescue training drills to ensure the safety of everyone involved,” said Pat Douglass, a manager with WVDP cleanup contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley. “Whenever you perform high-risk work evolutions, extensive planning, lessons learned, and practice are keys to a safe and successful outcome.” Link to Update
July 29, 2019 – A deactivation and decommissioning crew developed a conveyor system at the West Valley Demonstration Project to safely remove asbestos-containing material from inside the main plant process building. The wall plaster on several floors of the building contains ACM, which is being removed in preparation for its future demolition. A total of 56,000 pounds of wall plaster was recently removed from the fourth floor. The main plant was constructed between 1963-1966 as a commercial reprocessing facility to recover reusable plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear reactor fuel. Link to article
July 23, 2019 – Workers at EM’s West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) recently shipped a large transformer to a recycling facility, bringing the site’s cost savings from recycling to more than $14,000 to date.
During demolition projects, crews identify non-contaminated materials suitable for recycling. Payments received for recycling offset EM’s cleanup costs at WVDP. Link to Update
