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STIMULUS FUNDING WILL
ACCELERATE CLEANUP IN IDAHO
Funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act will do more than sustain employment at the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Idaho Site – it will accelerate
cleanup.
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Inside the retrieval
enclosure at Accelerated Retrieval Project-III
Click on image to enlarge |
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The Office of Environmental Management received $6 billon
in additional funding under the “stimulus bill” passed
earlier this year by Congress and signed by President Obama. The Idaho Site
will receive $468 million of the EM funding.
The funding will be used at DOE’s Idaho Site to:
- Decontaminate and decommission buildings that have
no useful mission.
- Accelerate removal of buried radioactive waste,
which will be packaged and sent to appropriate offsite
disposal sites.
- Accelerate removal and disposal of remote-handled
transuranic waste.
- Speed up packaging, removal and offsite disposal of
mixed low-level waste currently stored on site.
- Increase the rate at which spent nuclear fuel is
moved from underwater to dry storage.
“The stimulus money is in addition to our base cleanup
budget,” said Rick Provencher, DOE-Idaho Deputy Manager for
Environmental Management. “So it will allow us to speed up
the cleanup work we were planning to do in future years,
while continuing to meet our near-term cleanup milestones.
It will preserve jobs and create new ones in the near-term,
and allow us to save money over the long-term because we’ll
be doing work that would cost more the longer it is
deferred.”
IDAHO CLEANUP PROJECT
ARRA FACT SHEET 1119 Kb
Energy Secretary Chu
Announces $6 Billion in Recovery Act Funding for Environmental Cleanup 88 Kb
Editorial Date March 31, 2008
By Bradley Bugger
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