Various Fishy DOE Involvements
[Published in the Knoxville News-Sentinel after June 6, 2010]
Why is it that major news stories unfavorable to the Department of Energy are seldom reported on by the News-Sentinel until they are broken by some Nashville newspaper?
Most recently (6/3/10), the News-Sentinel reported on a story originated by the City Paper of Nashville concerning the use of government funds to defray the expenses of the “Tennessee Valley Corridor” and its promotional business summits. The News-Sentinel article summarized the criticisms of this use in one paragraph, while spending most of the article quoting denials from the various government and entities involved. How does it serve the public interest for the News-Sentinel merely to ask for a PR handout?
Maybe that’s the problem: the News-Sentinel is too much of a booster of DOE and its contractors and not enough of an inquirer into the use of the huge DOE funding directed to the Oak Ridge area.
The News-Sentinel might question why Y-12 needs to contribute to a summit in order to “highlight the role we play in meeting our nation’s national security requirements” and “build lasting relationships with business, community, and government leaders”. That is a pretty vague goal for a $42,500 contribution of taxpayer dollars — which could have funded a job for somebody.
The News-Sentinel might question why, if ORAU is a nonprofit organization, ORAU’s contribution of $10,000 is only from “corporate dollars” and does not include any taxpayer dollars. It’s funny how that nonprofit stuff works when business and political interests are involved.
The News-Sentinel might question why UT-Battelle gets to keep the royalties from the technologies it licenses — technologies that were developed with taxpayer funds. Aren’t such royalties supposed to accrue to the government, mostly to fund future research? How can it be that UT-B has become such a privileged character that it gets to keep the royalties? In effect, this is like an extra profit for their activities (and when they took over ORNL, they were supposed to be a nonprofit company, as Battelle itself is supposed to be). Why are they using the royalties for economic development and not, apparently, further research? How can UT-B claim that this “is not taxpayer money if we get a license that generates a revenue stream”? Umm….wasn’t that part of the point of licensing these technologies?
The News-Sentinel might question why DOE is helping to fund these summits not only directly but by reimbursement of its contractors. A DOE spokesman said that DOE was involved with the summits “because we want to be”, but your reporter seems not to have asked for DOE’s reasoning on this.
But most of all, the News-Sentinel might delve more deeply for itself into the allegations that these schmooze-alicious summits are a cash cow for Mr. [Zach] Wamp (a member of the House subcommittee controlling DOE funding) and his pals. If the true purpose of the summits is to buy some sort of access, surely that would be very newsworthy right now; if there is nothing to these allegations, surely it would be incumbent on the News-Sentinel to help disprove it, in the public interest. You guys have the printing press, after all.
In these difficult economic times, when so many have been laid off by DOE contractors, how can the government defend these fishy expenditures? The News-Sentinel needs to start asking the hard questions. Given the high quality of the recent series on questionable real estate transactions, perhaps the News-Sentinel should assign the business section reporters to the DOE beat.
——————————————————————————————————————–
We Can’t Afford Solar Energy
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel, January 9, 2012]
In browsing through some old documents, I found a Department of Energy press release from 27 June 1997 with this heading: “Peña Outlines Plan To “Send Solar Sales Through the Roof””. Mr. Pena was the Secretary of Energy at that time.
The press release noted that in a speech the previous day at the United Nations, President Clinton had called for the US “to meet the challenge of climate change” by moving toward greater use of solar energy. He said that “By capturing the sun’s warmth, we can help turn down the earth’s temperature”.
So Peña then announced the “Million Solar Roofs initiative”, with the goal of putting a solar installation on each of a million roofs by 2010. Toward this end, the Clinton administration would be “leveraging federal energy sales” and would work with local communities to expand the use of solar technology rapidly. Key to this effort would be enforcement of Clinton’s 1994 executive order to accelerate the installation of solar energy systems for federal buildings, federal grants (to “buy down” costs to make solar installations more affordable), and federal lending programs (e.g., through the Small Business Administration and HUD).
This effort clearly didn’t fly in 1997, for reasons that should be obvious to any sensible technical person. But here we are fourteen years later, going into 2012 with an administration with nearly the same game plan. It is doubtful that it will work now without huge federal subsidies. We can’t afford this luxury, despite the government’s efforts to portray it as an idea whose time has come.
Let’s All Talk Up the Town
[Published in the now-defunct Oak Ridge Observer, February 5, 2012]
Recently The Oak Ridger published several columns by Ray Smith and others touting 2011 progress and achievements in Oak Ridge. On February 2, both The Oak Ridge Observer and The Oak Ridger published special sections titled “Community Growth” and “Progress” respectively. On 3 February, The Oak Ridger had a column by DOE’s John Eschenberg on how “we” have turned a corner in restoring the Oak Ridge Reservation environment via cleanup, emphasizing new relationships with the principal cleanup contractor.
All of us who love this little town are glad to hear of real achievements and true progress. But some of the achievements cited in the many column-inches in these pieces don’t seem to be characterizable as actual progress. For example, the Woodland Town Center TIF is cited, when in fact nothing seems to have happened as yet, despite the well-orchestrated dominoes that fell into place over a few weeks last fall. So taking credit for progress here is like taking credit for having made a New Year’s resolution without yet having jogged a mile or cut a calorie.
Having what amount to advertisements from doctors, dentists, and medical facilities in a section called “Progress” is just plain disingenuous. As for DOE, it has missed many cleanup milestones over the years, allegedly due to funding issues — and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has let them do it, over and over. DOE’s patting itself on the back for finally making the progress it promised years ago makes a sensible person’s eyes roll.
Consider another aspect of the celebratory excess that these articles represent. All this happy shiny talk smacks of an organized campaign: “Let’s All Talk Up the Town”. A rah-rah campaign is not a bad thing if the true intent is to inspire the populace toward greater civic confidence and involvement. But this one seems so calculated, so out of the blue, and so out of sync with the facts that one has to suspect other motives. Personally, I think the main reason for it is to counter the often effective criticisms of the actions of the city, the school system, the IDB, CROET, etc., that are increasingly being made by citizens. The point of the campaign seems to be to imply that if everybody who’s anybody in Oak Ridge thinks that the city, the schools, CROET, the IDB, and DOE are doing a great job, then who are those nobodies to disagree?
Whose idea was this campaign? Who pushed it? Surely the editors of the two newspapers didn’t just get up one morning and independently say to themselves, “Why don’t I issue a promotional progress report including verbatim PR releases?” No, I think we have to look at the usual suspects, such as the Chamber of Commerce. I hope that we citizens eventually find out who all was involved with this. It may influence how we vote in the future.
Comments on the Fishiness in the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) Project
[The unedited version; edited versionpPublished in the Knoxville News Sentinel around June 18, 2013]
I would like to commend retired DOE project engineer Dave Wilfert on his attempts to get our legislators to pay attention to the disaster that is the Y-12 Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) design project.
I share his concerns. I am a registered professional engineer and a certified health physicist who spent 13 years at a Chicago engineering firm working on nuclear power plant design and then another 11 years at ORNL often working on or with design teams. So I was amazed when I read that the UPF has had to be extensively redesigned because the design was undersized, after $500M had been spent.
Here is a quick recap of the UPF chronology. March 2012: new federal project director for the UPF, John Eschenberg, declares the UPF to be the National Nuclear Security Administration’s “iconic project”. Design was two-thirds complete and the cost was estimated at $4.2-6.5B. About April 2012: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) found that safety issues were not adequately incorporated in the design and ith key safety features were left out.
June 2012: Eschenberg gave the cost as $6.5B, to be spent over 10-11 years; he said that “we” (feds) wanted supplier companies to “relocate” (by “stealing” them) to East Tennessee.
October 2012: at nearly 90% completion, Y-12 officials acknowledged to the DNFSB that the UPF needed to be redesigned because planned equipment would not fit, e.g., the roof was 13 feet too low and the walls a foot too thin. The DNFSB chairman noted that safety too had taken a back seat until far along in the design. Eschenberg explained that the project had “prematurely established a hard footprint” and agreed that there had been no large changes in scope (the usual explanation for misdesign or cost overruns). He minimized the problem by stating that “all projects struggle” with rework issues.
October 2012: 560 people were working on the project, including nine NNSA employees, plus 270 subcontract workers. Eschenberg said more engineers would be hired (apparently without firing the ones who had produced the inadequate design) and more space rented for their offices. November 2012: Eschenberg’s spin on the UPF problem was that it was a “game-changing project”.
January 2013: DOE announced a new contractor, Consolidated Nuclear Security, for Y-12; included its responsibilities will include the design and construction management of the UPF. Incumbent contractor member B&W protested the award even though the design screwup occurred on their watch.
Some people don’t want to hear all this. April 2013: Oak Ridge hired someone to recruit companies to locate in Oak Ridge to do UPF work. Per the city manager, that it is critical to line up support for the project and get it going.
May 2013: the NNSA refused to release a letter from Eschenberg to the contractor team. But DNFSB reported that there were “numerous errors” in already approved design documents.
Who does that?
More on the Uranium Production Facility (UPF)
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel around September 17, 2013]
The conclusions of two reports dissecting the Uranium Production Facility design process were no surprise to any informed observer. As expected, it was found that the building size and other specifications were frozen at an absurdly early point in design and that some design engineers and their supervisors repeatedly expressed concern to management about the size and other issues.
NNSA/DOE claims to have been clueless about all this. But if they had been attending design meetings regularly (instead of parking their carcasses in their offices), they would have been aware of these issues. [NNSA/DOE: National Nuclear Security Adminstration, Department of Energy]
Let’s say that that is all water under the bridge now. But there remains something that DOE can do. Given NNSA/DOE’s ostensible support of those who express concerns about safety and costs, it is of great interest that anybody who kept differing with the official story about the size and cost of the facility was quashed. Shouldn’t DOE insist that the incompetent and coercive individuals on the management team be fired?
Couldn’t DOE check on the quashed people to make sure that they are still involved in the design and that their careers are not affected by their participation in this debacle, which they tried to prevent? In particular, there was a manager who was “replaced for calling attention to space and budget concerns, making [others] reluctant to speak up”. Can’t DOE make sure that this person is reinstated, given that he is exactly the kind of person the project needs? Can’t DOE at least verify that his career has not been blasted by this episode? Maybe DOE should even hire him themselves.
If DOE is serious about this project, they need to make things right in the personnel area as well as in the design area.
The Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), Again
[I think it was published in the Knoxville News Sentinel around April 15, 2015]
In his recent story on the non-inclusion of Y-12 auxiliary building costs in the overall cost of the Uranium Processing Facility, Frank Munger stated that the reason for the UPF cost spiral was “a design mixup”.
Either Munger has been drinking the Kool-Aid or he is being disingenuous. As various earlier stories he wrote on the UPF design and cost problems made clear, there was no mixup. Rather, the design was dictated from above instead of arising from design analyses done by the engineers on the project. Those engineers tried and tried to make the equipment fit into the undersized building, but that was impossible.
In addition, it was clear that the higher-ups were made aware of the difficulties on numerous occasions, but chose to believe that the inappropriate original design could be made to work. One mid-level manager was actually removed from the project for persistently calling attention to the issues. (Talk about shooting the messenger.) Yet the NNSA/contractor solution was to add people to the project, apparently not to subtract the incompetents. [NNSA: National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy] Every true engineer knows that for the most efficient operation and thus most cost-effective result, form should follow function. That did not happen in this case for political reasons associated with costs. The cause is no mystery — and it was not a mixup.
