INTERA’s Patrick Williamson, QP, Principal Hydrogeochemist, will be presenting at the “CGS Colombia 2023” Conference, held in Medellin, November 7th – 8th. Patrick’s presentation, entitled “Cordoba Co-Disposal Facility: A Best Practice for Thickened Tailings Management and the Prevention of Acid Generation from Waste Rock”, will take place on Nov. 8th at 8:30 am during the Social & Environment Session. INTERA’s Angie Persico, Director of Mining Business Development, will also be in attendance at the conference. To learn more and to register, visit: https://cgsorg.com/cgs-events/cgs-colombia/
November 7th – Patrick Williamson to Present at CGS Colombia 2023
INTERA’s Patrick Williamson, QP, Principal Hydrogeochemist, will be presenting at the “CGS Colombia 2023” Conference, held in Medellin, November 7th – 8th. Patrick’s presentation, entitled “Cordoba Co-Disposal Facility: A Best Practice for Thickened Tailings Management and the Prevention of Acid Generation from Waste Rock”, will take place on Nov. 8th at 8:30 am during the Social & Environment Session. INTERA’s Angie Persico, Director of Mining Business Development, will also be in attendance at the conference. To learn more and to register, visit: https://cgsorg.com/cgs-events/cgs-colombia/
Sarah Wigginton Chosen for 19th Annual RECS Program
INTERA congratulates Sarah Wigginton, a Geoscientist in our Hanford office, for being selected to participate in the prestigious 19th Annual RECS Program (RECS 2023). The program was held July 16-25, 2023, in Colorado and Wyoming, and only 32 young leaders in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and the energy transition were chosen to participate. The RECS 2023 program emphasized CCUS commercial deployment—technical requirements for permitting, where the market is today, key players, and how policy and business drivers shape investments and deployment.
Sponsored by the US Department of Energy, RECS is the premier CCUS education and training experience for young professionals in the US. RECS 2023 is a comprehensive program that combines classroom instruction, field activities, site visits, and more, covering all aspects of CCUS, from science and technology to policy and business. Sarah’s expertise in generating complex geologic models and her work in reservoir evaluation for CCUS made her a valuable addition to this year’s program.
The RECS community is actively engaged in efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and drive the clean energy transition, and we are proud that Sarah Wigginton represented INTERA at this important event. Congratulations to Sarah for this well-deserved recognition!
Composite Analysis Approved by DOE’s LFRG After More than 22 Years
INTERA is proud to announce that on August 9, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility Review Group (LFRG) voted to approve the Compliance Evaluation of DOE/RL-2019-52 Rev. 2, the Hanford Site’s Composite Analysis (CA). This approval is the successful culmination of a long and expansive project led by INTERA staff, beginning in 2015, across multiple contracts necessary to maintain the waste disposal authorization for all the Hanford Site’s low-level disposal facilities. The work that went into the CA, which consists of 1,014 pages documenting five performance assessments that simulate 10,052 years of fate and transport of 16 radionuclides, models that simulated 588 waste sites, development of 26 (million-plus-node) vadose zone models, commenced in 1998 and was initially led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). INTERA’s Will Nichols, Senior Vice President of our Northwest Region, was at PNNL when the work began in 1998 and has been involved with the CA since that time, and his technical expertise has played a significant role in the success of this decade’s long effort. INTERA is very proud of all the work that Will has led and completed that has resulted in this important milestone approval for DOE’s Hanford Site. A more detailed history of this work can be found, HERE.
Composite Analysis Approved by DOE’s LFRG After More than 22 Years
On August 9, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility Review Group (LFRG) voted to approve the Compliance Evaluation of DOE/RL-2019-52 Rev. 2, the Hanford Site’s Composite Analysis (CA). This approval is the successful culmination of a long and expansive project led by INTERA staff across multiple contracts necessary to maintain the waste disposal authorization for all the Hanford Site’s low-level disposal facilities.
When INTERA first began work on the Hanford Site on October 1, 2008, as a pre-selected subcontractor to the new CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC), the only scope granted to INTERA was to complete the Hanford Site CA. That was it; everything else we have done at Hanford since then has been organic expansion of our scope as we demonstrated value. Ironically, we didn’t commence work on the CA until June 2015 due DOE directives to delay this work until the Tank Closure and Waste Management EIS was completed.
But in fact, the history of this effort goes back even further. INTERA was tasked with updating the original Composite Analysis, which was a rapid effort completed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in 1998 to comply with a new DOE directive to prepare such an analysis to account for the all-pathways dose resulting from all contributing radiological sources to provide a comprehensive evaluation of cumulative dose to the public from this DOE site after site closure. It was widely acknowledged that a more comprehensive update of this initial CA was needed. INTERA’s Will Nichols was on the team that commenced work in 2001 to update the Hanford Site CA – so he has been engaged for 22 years, performing work under four prime contractors, to see the updated Hanford Site CA completed.
Commencing work under INTERA staff leadership in June 2015 with Will Nichols as project manager. First, a planning phase was conducted to define the project. Then a scoping phase, nearly two years long, started in October 2015 to develop the technical scope and approach – including conduct of workshops to engage DOE Headquarters and Hanford Site performance assessment managers in the process. This culminated in the issue of a Scoping Summary document supported by a series of Technical Approach documents in 2017, which were approved by the Hanford Site Groundwater/Vadose Zone Executive Council. That approval allowed INTERA to move into the analysis phase, in which models and tools were developed, evaluated, applied, and used to support the writing of the CA document itself. The analysis phase (2017 to 2020) saw the peak of the project work, which engaged many INTERA staff across multiple offices. Many new tools were developed, and the state of the art in vadose zone modeling was advanced significantly for Hanford in the process. The analysis phase culminated in the Revision 0 document delivered to the LFRG for review in December 2020.
The LFRG review was an arduous process. Workshops were provided by INTERA staff totaling 40 hours of technical presentation to the LFRG review team just to introduce the scope, approach, and organization of the modeling and documentation. Then a week-long onsite review followed. The review team identified 8 Key Issues (things that must be resolved before the analysis could be approved as a basis for amending the Hanford Site’s Disposal Authorization), 15 Secondary Issues (things that could be resolved along with Key Issues or in the maintenance program), and 18 Observations. Additionally, the LFRG review team granted us six Best Management Practices – welcome praise on our work that included our QA/QC program, our communication strategy, and our approach to dose calculations. Issue forms identifying corrective actions were prepared, vetted, and approved by LFRG to chart the path to approval.
INTERA staff returned to work in October 2021, for this part under Bob Andrew’s leadership, to revise the analysis to address all the Key Issues, Secondary Issues, and Observations by performing the corrective actions. This resulted in Revision 1 of the CA document in spring 2022, which was submitted with updated issue forms to the LFRG for approval. Upon further review, the LFRG identified 2 Key Issues and 5 Secondary Issues that were, in their judgment, not closed. This required another round of amended corrective actions to be identified and approved, and in October 2022 the INTERA team returned to the work again, under Will Nichols’ direction again, making further revisions to modeling calculations and documentation to attain approval. Revision 2 of the document and supporting documentation was submitted in spring 2023 to the LFRG for approval. Coordinating and supporting the LFRG co-chairs finally enabled the closure of all Key Issues and all but two Secondary Issues, as signified by the LFRG approval vote on August 9, 2023.
Maintenance of the Hanford Site CA is a critical part of Hanford Site operations because it enables disposal of low-level radioactive waste in Hanford’s onsite disposal facilities: the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, the 200 East and 200 West Low-Level Burial Grounds, and the Integrated Disposal Facility. It will support additional performance assessments yet to come for tank disposition. The tools and models INTERA developed to complete the CA have become the backbone of supporting CERCLA operable unit decision processes and tank disposition efforts, including providing the foundation of the Cumulative Impact Evaluation (CIE) as well.
This work was featured in The Central Plateau Cleanup Company’s (CPCCo) Newsletter, Connections, and can be viewed on pages 4-5 HERE.
INTERAns to Present at the 2023 Idaho Mining Conference
INTERA’s Lakin Beal, Hydrogeologist, and Jesse McGunnigle, Geologist, will be presenting at the 2023 Idaho Mining Conference to be held October 10-11, 2023 in Boise, Idaho. Both presentations will coincide on October 11 (Day 2) from 2:00 – 3:00 PM during the Reclamation and Closure Session. Lakin’s presentation is entitled, “Probabilistic Analysis of Groundwater Migration Under Uncertain Future Conditions at a Mine Closure Site”. Jesse’s presentation is entitled, “Leveraging Acid Base Accounting Data Against Exploration Data to Facilitate Closure Planning”. Additionally, INTERA is a sponsor and will be exhibiting at this event. To learn more, visit: https://idahominingconference.org/