EM has established its key priorities for calendar year 2022, covering planned cleanup, project construction, acquisition and other important accomplishments to advance EM’s environmental and risk-reduction mission.

“Our many accomplishments in 2021 positioned EM to achieve an equally challenging slate of priorities in 2022,” EM Senior Advisor William “Ike” White said. “Our 2022 priorities underscore our goals to accomplish cleanup that is safe and protective of our workforce, the public and the environment, and in a manner that is transparent to the communities that host and support our sites.”

The EM Calendar Year 2022 Priorities sets objectives at sites across the nation and for the program, including:

• Completing cold commissioning of the first melter at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant and beginning operation of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal system at the Hanford Site in Washington state, essential steps toward the treatment of tank waste at that site.
• Processing the first 100 liquid waste containers as operations begin at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, a major milestone at the DOE Idaho National Laboratory Site.
• Beginning construction of the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative in Aiken, South Carolina, a key facility near the Savannah River Site that will enable the U.S. Department of Energy to partner with industry and academia on the development of technology to benefit environmental cleanup and national security missions.
• Completing 30 shipments of transuranic waste from the EM Los Alamos Field Office to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
• Completing demolition of Building X-326 at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, making the former uranium enrichment facility the first of three massive structures to be torn down at the site.
• Completing removal of another 1 million tons of uranium mill tailings from the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project in Utah, moving the site to a cumulative 13 million tons of tailings relocated away from the Colorado River and into an engineered disposal facility.
• Awarding the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, the largest single contract that EM will award for cleanup activities.
• Updating climate vulnerability assessments at all EM sites, a commitment to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas impacts from EM facilities and activities, and managing the effects of climate change.
• Implementing the Justice 40 Initiative pilot project at the EM Los Alamos Field Office.

The full set of EM 2022 priorities can be accessed here.