Energycast: Stakeholders Share Insight on Nuclear Renaissance at National Cleanup Workshop

I'm proud that EM is leading America's AI revolution. I mean, as a taxpayer, that makes me feel good about where our money's going. We aren't just managing the past. We are powering the future. Welcome to the 2026 National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Virginia. I'm Marissa Sarback. This year, the theme is powering and securing the future through restoration and revitalization. Community leaders, stakeholders, and industry leaders all coming together to collaborate on how to best clean up the country's nuclear sites and reuse them. The Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, Tim Walsh, kicking off the event as the keynote speaker. To me, it boils down to two words, urgency and impact, or maybe it's the outcomes. Those should be the north stars for our posture and decision-making. We will conduct our restoration projects with a sense of urgency and redevelop former legacy cleanup sites in a way that brings the biggest impact to our local communities and the nation. The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management is tasked with cleaning up the 107 legacy nuclear sites that fueled United States' wins in World War II and the Cold War. Now, many are getting a new life as EM works to modernize their nuclear infrastructure. Now that we've cleaned up 92 of those sites, and we're down to the last 15, we need to reinvigorate the mission and focus on the why. And the why we're cleaning up is to catalyze new economic development at those sites. One of those sites is in Piketon, Ohio. It's one of three former gaseous diffusion plants in EM's portfolio that has set the bar for what's possible. When the facility was operating, we won the Cold War, and everybody had a purpose. And then when that stops, and then the purpose kind of dissipates, you think, well, what's next? And so you watch these buildings not operating anymore, getting prepared for demolition. And honestly, the morale in the community is a little bit depressing because what was once vibrant is now just waiting to be demolished. So this is giving us a future. EM's cleanup is opening former and current federal land to attract new industry and generate new jobs. The biggest announcement that we've had is the SoftBank announcement to build a data center campus and a gas-fired power plant as part of our re-industrialization of the site. The most exciting part of that is it's much bigger than the site. They're purchasing about 6,000 acres of private lands, which will become taxable property, providing a revenue stream to the local government so that we can invest in our infrastructure. When complete, the investment could total up to $500 billion to build the world's most powerful advanced computing campus and the world's largest single-site natural gas power plant. Paducah, Kentucky is another former gaseous diffusion plant proud to share a similar story. Global Laser Enrichment purchased property adjoining the site, and they're gonna be enriching uranium. General Matter is leasing land from DOE. They're also gonna be enriching uranium. And then just recently, we had the announcement from Brookfield and NextEra Energy of a $100 billion investment in our community for a data center and then the energy component that's coming with that data center. Companies moving in bring employment opportunity. The president and CEO of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce says families who moved away after the site ceased operations in 2013 are moving back, and so are new residents. We've been a part of the Department of Energy for since the 1950s, and we have said we didn't wanna just be part of the legacy, even though that is such a strong historical foundation for us as when we were part of American defense. But now we really wanna be a part of the future. Oak Ridge, Tennessee is home to the oldest former gaseous diffusion plant and the first to be shut down, taking its operational jobs with it. Now that land is home to the next generation nuclear companies that have announced more than $10 billion in investments that'll bring jobs back to the region. We have about 20 companies now that are using the old K-25 site and being dispersed across that in a multitude of different things, whether it's small modular reactors, fuel fabrication, reprocessing fuel, reprocessing, advanced manufacturing. There's a number of different companies going involved. It takes time, funding, and serious collaboration to revive and modernize these sites into American energy hubs. What helps, according to DOE Senior Advisor Jim Kaler, is that the communities are accepting and even inviting of industrial development. I've been in the energy industry almost 20 years, and two years ago, any one of these projects would have been a world-scale project that would have been written up and heavily covered by the media, and now we're knocking them out on a fairly regular basis. Kaler says when complete, the economic benefits and the energy abundance will be apparent. At all of our projects, we're adding more power to the grid than is required by the project, so it certainly doesn't increase the cost of consumers in the area. It adds a bunch of local economic benefits, but at the end of all this, we're gonna end up with a more robust power system. Each of the local leaders representing communities with new American energy hubs say one thing is certain. Whatever the opportunity is, they want to be a part of it. Clean up with a purpose. It really brings the community back into focus on making sure that we still have an important role just for the nation going forward. Progress, of course, comes with a price tag. Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh says his goal, and the Trump administration's goal, is to make the program a worthwhile investment for the American people. This is an $8 billion a year program, and what are the taxpayers getting for that $8 billion? They're getting a lot for that money. The sites are being cleaned up, and more importantly, the communities are being revitalized, and we're reinvigorating our industrial base, and we're back to building big things here in America. Again, big things that we really haven't built since when these sites were built back in the 1940s and 1950s. All eyes are locked on the Hanford site, with excitement over a new approach that has the potential to accelerate cleanup by decades, and its future as another American energy hub. Everybody that has a different opinion on Hanford really has the same goal in mind, and that's cleanup as quickly, as efficiently, and as safely as possible. Ray Geimer, site manager at Hanford, knows the challenge as well. It's EM's largest site, comprised of 586 square miles and 13,000 employees, tasked with cleaning up the site that supported defense missions for nearly 50 years. The tri-party agreement that we're operating under is an agreement that was basically written 35 years ago, based on what was known and existing at the time. On top of that, you've got the EPA, who issued something called the Third Third Rule, which involved treatment standards for high-level waste, which was also in the 80s, in which, at the only time, the only treatment standard was vitrification. Vitrification is the method of turning tank waste into glass, which removes 99.9% of its radioactivity and allows for its disposal. Over the years, technology has improved, revealing additional ways for scientists to remove the radioactivity before transport. Grout is one of those, and grout by itself doesn't work. It's all based on the separations technology, the pretreatment that we do, which is called the tank-side cesium removal, which is basically an ion exchange process that removes all of the high-activity waste, all of the cesium, a lot of the strontium, all the transuranics, all get removed in this pretreatment process, leaving, basically, a very benign final product. The grout strategy is being successfully used at EM's Savannah River site. Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh submitted a proposal to the state of Washington in an attempt to get the grout strategy approved so the team at Hanford can neutralize more of its waste and get it out of Hanford quicker. We're 99.3% full in our double-shelf tank, something like that. We're basically, we have no room to operate, and we're continuing to retrieve, and it's a very difficult process to try to retrieve and manage those tank wastes with the tanks being as full as they are. If we could start just moving some of that tank waste out of there, and we're ready to do that as early as tomorrow, technically. Dave Brunert, EM's Chief Operating Officer, says if that problem can be solved, it opens the door to possibilities. Hanford is ripe with opportunity. It has opportunities not only to complete the restoration part of the mission, but the revitalization is fantastic. The opportunities are spectacular. There are huge opportunities for nuclear fuel reprocessing, and there's opportunities that I can't even imagine, but I know if we make this site available with power, with guards, guns, and gates, people, entrepreneurs, they will find ways to make it successful. And when that happens, Brunert says more energy gets to more Americans. There are 70 million people that live in energy poverty, and by energy poverty, that means they spend an outsized portion of every paycheck on paying their light bill or paying fuel for their truck to get themselves to work. By accelerating the restoration mission, we can move to revitalization and further support the expansion of our energy grid, have new advanced manufacturing, and have new nuclear plants, and basically, have energy addition rather than energy subtraction. The unique capabilities at EM's Savannah River site are playing a major role in kickstarting America's nuclear renaissance. Earlier this year, the site announced it's restarting its chemical separation facility known as H-Canyon. That has big implications for energy and medicine. We're gonna pivot to extract the uranium to make high-assay, low-enriched uranium in the H-Canyon facility, but particularly, there's some isotopes that we can also yield from that, americium and some other valuable isotopes that we can use for medical aspects and all. The next project on the site is to restart H-B line, a separate facility that operates above H-Canyon. We can reactivate that over time to be able to process and extract the plutonium that makes oxide for reactors as well. So the intent is to utilize these facilities to get the old material, extract them for specialized nuclear facilities, and others to help with the energy hub and innovation going forward in the United States. A panel discussion titled All Roads Lead to WIPP showcased how EM sites nationwide rely on the New Mexico site. It's a trailblazer, not just for the US, but for the world. There are almost no other deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste in the world. If you listen to the headlines, it'll mostly be about spent nuclear fuel and that there are none, and they're starting one in Finland. In fact, we've been in placing nuclear waste, transuranic nuclear waste, for over 25 years. So we know how to do it. WIPP has played a crucial role in the removal of transuranic waste from EM sites nationwide. Leaders explained how infrastructure upgrades underway this year are helping continue that important support in the years ahead. Anytime you work at 2,150 feet below the ground, everything goes through a hoist, everything down and everything up. And so we need hoists. Two of the hoists we utilize were borrowed when we got them, and their motors are over 100 years old now. One of those is off being replaced now. So we need to invest in the facility that we know is gonna be open for decades. The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management is funded by Congress. Representative Chuck Fleischman of Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District is chair of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. We had a chance to sit down with the congressman to get his perspective on EM's work. You have long been one of EM's biggest supporters. Just on stage a few moments ago, we heard you call it a federal obligation to clean up these sites and turn them into national assets. Why is that so important? Well, years ago, during the Manhattan Project and during the Cold War, we as a nation were not as careful in the way that we actually made our nuclear weapons, and that was to the detriment of many communities around the United States. When we go in and clean up these sites, we can revitalize them and bring in new businesses. So from an environmental standpoint, I think it's an obligation of the American government to take care of this for these communities. But the great upside is, and I see this in Oak Ridge all the time, as we take down these legacy buildings, as we clean up these legacy sites, as we deal with these legacy toxins and they go away forever, we can bring in new businesses and it's economic revitalization. So it's a win-win. You helped secure $8 billion for this program. What is it like for you to see the return on investment here for American taxpayers? We have decades worth of work to get done yet, but we've accomplished so much. It makes me feel good as a legislator. It makes me feel good as an American, but it also, these are great paying jobs, great American contractors. They do good work. So the American taxpayer is not only getting great value for their tax dollar, these are great jobs. It's economic revitalization. It's just the right thing to do. I just think this is something that is so critically important to America's nuclear renaissance. We're seeing small modular reactors, micro reactors, generation three and generation four reactors, the advanced reactors. We're seeing large reactors come back. American's nuclear renaissance can never be complete unless EM does its work and EM is doing more than its fair share of the work. So what does America's energy future hold? Well, if you ask Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh, the future is bright. I'm proud that EM is leading America's AI revolution and ensuring America dominates and wins the AI race. We're building the infrastructure and we're gonna continue to push forward with that. I'm confident we can do it safely and securely for the nation and that AI will be a tool that will lead to scientific discoveries that we can only imagine today that will transform our lives. The Genesis mission is where the potential of that AI revolution is becoming a reality in the United States. We find ourselves in the middle of a computing revolution that is gonna transform the practice of science and engineering in America. The United States spends $1 trillion a year in R&D and that R&D, it is the engine of our economic vitality and our national security. With the Genesis mission, we seek to double the productivity and impact of that trillion dollars a year within a decade by mobilizing the entire capacity of the nation, the national laboratories, the 17 national labs, the university ecosystem, industry, and philanthropy to build a platform to accelerate scientific discovery through AI, quantum computing, and high-performance computing. Dr. Dario Gil, DOE's Undersecretary for Science, says EM is positioned to benefit from advancements in AI and EM's progress is opening land for the supercomputing facilities that can make that possible. I know at moments it can look scary because there's so many aspects that things are accelerating, but when we orient it towards purpose, towards problem solving, and the environmental mission is a wonderful example of purpose. When we orient those capabilities towards purpose, it is going to transform how we solve these problems. So I tell folks always, we are not running out of problems to solve in the world. We need all the help we can get. And so we gotta go and take these technologies and engage with our communities to go and use them for good, for problems that really matter. And I think the environmental mission is an extraordinary example of using it to something for the common good. Thank you for watching our coverage of the 12th Annual National Cleanup Workshop. To follow environmental management updates as we work to restore and revitalize our nation's nuclear infrastructure, you can find us on our social media pages. Reporting at the National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Virginia, I'm Marissa Sarback for the U.S. Department of Energy.