Pantex Blog
Progress continues at the ASC
The skyline around Pantex continues to change as work at the Administrative Support Complex progresses. What was a field of milo this time last year is now an expansive building that grows closer and closer to completion with each passing day. Currently, the ASC is on schedule, and several areas of the building are nearing completion.
With the exterior nearly finished, the work indoors has begun to ramp up. For example, on the third floor of the west wing, drywall, painting, the break room, and bathrooms are complete and will serve as the mockup for the remaining break rooms and bathrooms for the rest of the building.
Major mechanical equipment, such as chillers, air handlers, plumbing lift station, and electrical transformers, have now been installed, and the domestic water line between the ASC and Pantex is now in operation. Not only is the skyline changing but traffic and roads are as well. The acceleration and de acceleration lanes on FM 2373 were completed recently and will provide relief for traffic entering and exiting the ASC area.
Upcoming milestones include the completion of the overhead power and the exterior envelope of the building, which is scheduled to take place this month. This month, crews will begin installing furniture, and the parking lot should be completed.
With the progress comes more people working at the ASC site. The number of workers has reached its peak.
Mentoring matters
Starting a new job can be anxiety producing. The situation can be nerve-racking unless you have a “coach” to support you.
POLO group during their Second Annual Hike and Bike at Palo Duro Canyon State Park.
For Trent Spivey, that coach was Courtney Waddell from Pantex Facility Engineering. Spivey spent considerable time awaiting his clearance in a trailer located just outside the protected area. Fortunately, Waddell stopped by regularly to ask how she could help make his transition into the company as easy as possible.
“Without Courtney, I would have known nothing about Pantex nine months after being hired,” Spivey said. “Coming to a place with more than 3,000 people that you don’t know, it helps to have a friend.”
Spivey learned about Pantex while attending West Texas A&M and as a student had the opportunity to take a site tour and meet with different managers. Once on board, he joined the Pantex Outreach and Leadership Organization, a group of early career professionals in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, where Waddell volunteered to be his mentor.
“Having a mentor to introduce me to the people I’d be working with put me further ahead than those who came in blindly. That’s the number one success of the mentoring program,” Spivey said. “The mentorship really plugged me in and showed me what I can be within the company.”
Spivey now is on the POLO social subcommittee, and he looks forward to one day passing on what he knows to other new employees.
Chris Whitmer is one of the original organizers of POLO. Since its formation in 2014, POLO has grown to more than 100 members who participate in various networking, social, and community events. At a recent networking event, engineers toured the inside of a turbine at the Pantex wind farm, and at another, they heard an engineer talk about career paths, technical versus management, based on his own experience.
“POLO gives new hires, especially those coming from areas outside of Amarillo, the opportunity to meet other people, which gives them a reason to stay,” said Whitmer, who is from Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Barbara Vertefeuille from Safety Analysis Engineering, shares Whitmer’s viewpoint.
“If people have someone to go to—someone to ask questions and point them in the right direction—they are more likely to stay,” she said.
Vertefeuille has taught training for the last 20 years and has mentored those who are working toward their Documented Safety Analysis qualifications. She focuses on the specialized abilities they need for the work and helps them understand their role.
“People need someone to help them progress in their job and lives. I try to help them feel comfortable and confident in their own abilities,” she said.
Wild Pantex - Guest blog by Kimberly Newton, summer intern
My name is Kimberly Newton and I am excited to be writing you as a recent graduate from West Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Biology. I have the fortune to be chosen for one of Pantex summer internships, and shadow Wildlife Biologist Jim Ray. My main topic of interest is with reptiles and amphibians, but I have a passion for all wildlife including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. I enjoy participating in volunteer work and outreach events, and I have even served as an officer for the WTAMU student chapter of the Wildlife Society. The majority of my experience is with small mammals and birds, but I also have some experience surveying for and marking yellow mud turtles, as well as copperheads and other various snakes of the eastern Texas region.
I am new to the team, however, I am not new to Pantex. Workers here have probably seen me around, wearing knee-high snake boots and a WT baseball cap. I have had the privilege of working for almost two years on a research project that measures the effects of wind turbines on avian and bat mortality rates. This project is all-inclusive, using bird plot counts during the summer and raptor (birds of prey) surveys during the winter to correlate different habitats to certain species. Our team of WTAMU students also perform searches to collect vouchers of the fatalities caused by the turbines, and we film the turbines at night to verify collision rates.
I am happy to say that I will still be around to help out my old teammates this summer, while increasing my own experience. I am involved with several research projects conducted or sponsored by the Pantex including a Texas Tech study on Swainson’s Hawks. Additionally, I will spend the summer mapping milkweed patches and counting larvae of monarch butterflies. Most of you know the importance of pollinating species, and how rapidly their populations are in decline; therefore, our efforts will help biologists gain insight into how the facility is used by this species. Some time and research will be devoted to horned lizard surveys, too. By capturing and PIT-tagging each individual horned lizard, we give that individual its own identification, then gathering information on survival and mortality rates, as well as population estimates based on the rate of recapture. I am also going to help with mapping colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs, which Pantex has performed annually for around 20 years!
Over the last few weeks, I have also participated in outreach events and learned how to band Purple Martins. The bands are like identification bracelets that give the bird both a State and Federal number. With a small group of Pantex employees and volunteers, we were able to attach small backpack like GPS and GEO data-loggers onto 31 birds. Next year, we’ll collect the data-loggers and be able to tell details of their migration flight to and from South America. The rest of days have been filled responding to nuisance calls, data entry, and attempting to catch grasshopper mice for an exhibit at the Amarillo Zoo.
I look forward to the challenge of waking up to something new each day. I have a lot to learn and some hard work ahead of me, but I am determined to make the most out of this opportunity. A special thanks goes to all the people that worked hard to open up an internship for me. I am excited for what this summer brings, and I can’t wait to share it with you. As I shadow and learn from Pantex’s own wildlife biologist, Jim Ray, my hope is that I can positively contribute to his cause by keeping Pantex a wildlife-friendly place.
Wild Pantex – Pantex’s Strangest Creature
Article by Jim Ray, Pantex Wildlife Biologist/Scientist
Quite regularly at Pantex, I will get the question, "What is the most unusual thing that you have seen out here?" Or, "What is the most interesting thing that you have seen out here?”
Well, in either case my answer has nothing to do with something that is rare or new to me. In fact, the species is quite common, though not commonly observed because of its tendency to stay in burrows except at night or during rainfall. As a kid in my hometown of Dalhart, I found them living in our water meters.
Allow me to get even more specific.
What I am calling Pantex's strangest creature is a form of the adult barred tiger salamander, which is physically different from the terrestrial form as determined by a "climate of sanctuary" within a harsh environment.
An adult of the terrestrial form of the barred tiger salamander. Photo courtesy of Richard T. Kazmaier.
But, I digress. Let's look at the "conventional" reproduction strategy of our barred tiger salamander. This species lives in burrows in the uplands, and like toads, "migrates" by the dozens, hundreds, or thousands during or after rainfall to reproduce in our playa lakes and other such situations. Depending on water temperature, their eggs hatch in two to five weeks into larvae that have front legs and external gills. Eventually, they "sprout" hind legs, lose their external gills, and then leave the water at three to four months of age. The larvae are often collected and sold as "water dogs" for fish bait.
In June 2010, my West Texas A&M University subcontractor working on amphibians and reptiles encountered approximately 50 terrestrial adults crossing the highway that makes our east boundary. This was following a substantial thunderstorm and each individual was moving east to west, presumably towards a playa wetland located approximately a half mile to the west. That same day, I observed a similar scenario on the highway and in proximity to a playa wetland a few miles to the south.
Here is where the strangeness begins...
In an arid environment, where tiger salamanders have access to a fairly permanent, fish-free body of water, a proportion of their larvae take advantage of the sanctuary of the available water by sexually maturing, while retaining their larval form. This is called neoteny. Besides an advantage to the individual (safety and habitat for reproduction), this benefits the population by allowing for continued production during times that the terrestrial form may not have available surface water and for a duration to accommodate egg-laying and the maturing of larvae.
A proportion of the neotenic population morphs to become cannibalistic. These get huge, develop proportionately larger heads and teeth, and specialize on eating smaller individuals of their own kind. Neotenic tiger salamanders are perfectly capable of reproducing and will mate with each other, or even with their terrestrial counterparts that enter the water to breed. Again, a proportion of the resulting offspring will morph into the terrestrial form, while many will remain in the water in the neotenic form.
An adult of the neotenic form of the barred tiger salamander. Photo courtesy Richard T. Kazmaier.
Equally interesting; should the neotenic adults become stressed, such as through lowering water levels, many will go ahead and metamorphisize into the terrestrial form and leave the water! Huge individuals will lose a significant amount of mass in the transformation.
So, where at Pantex do we have these interesting neotenic creatures? The answer is our Waste Water Treatment Facility and associated Irrigation Storage Pond, which fit the requirements for neotenic individuals to thrive: reliable, fish-free water source in an arid or semi-arid environment.
Are these guys equipped to survive in an arid environment or what? The tiger salamander is one of my favorite species that inhabits our Wild Pantex.
Pantex SPO receives national honor
Pantex security police officer Billy Hall was recently recognized as one of the best in the U.S. Department of Energy Complex.
Hall is the latest recipient of the Colonel Sydnor Award, named after Colonel Elliot P. Sydnor, who had a large impact in the modernization of the Savannah River Site’s Protective Force in 1983. Sydnor would go on to help develop the Department of Energy’s Composite Adversary Team.
Billy Hall (center) receives the Colonel Sydnor Award from Ben Bitonel (left) and Kerry Wisniewski.
In honor of Colonel Sydnor, the Office of Enterprise Assessments presents the award annually to a CAT member who demonstrates the highest level of physical fitness and tactical proficiency and exhibits qualities associated with superior character and leadership.
“The Composite Adversary Team represents the most talented Security Police Officers across the DOE complex,” Protective Force Deputy Chief Daniel Holmes said. “It is very difficult to be selected to be a part of the CAT program.”
Hall has been a part of the Special Response Team at Pantex for 14 years and is now an SRT captain. He said that the position has given him many tools that have allowed him to be a more effective leader for his team.
“Being selected for this award by my peers — from all of the other DOE sites — as the Colonel Sydnor winner is the greatest accomplishment in my career thus far,” said Hall. “Finally reaching this goal has been very gratifying and required much hard work, patience, dedication and love for what I do.”
The DOE CAT Program’s level of excellence is recognized throughout the worldwide nuclear security community, and Pantex has risen to the occasion before. Hall is the third Pantexan to receive this honor in the last 20 years.