Hanford Update
In My Opinion:
Hanford Cleanup Delays Threaten Our Health and Safety
Greg deBruler, Columbia Riverkeeper, Hanford ProjectFor over 18 years I have worked on behalf of the people of the NW and the living creatures that deserve a clean healthy Columbia River.
Hanford, most of us know, is the most contaminated site in North America. Since 1989 the government has been trying to cleanup the radioactive and chemical waste at Hanford. If Hanford is not cleaned up in a timely manor the waste will permanently contaminate the life-blood of the NW: our Columbia River.
The cleanup at Hanford is considered so important that we have already spent $25 billion on it since 1989. We spend $2 billion each year in an effort to protect the aquifer underneath the site and the Columbia River, into which Hanford’s groundwater flows. But there have been many delays and frequent excuses as to why the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) can’t get the job done in a timely manor.
The DOE is now proposing the most life threatening delays ever in Hanford cleanup.
Imagine for a moment that a management team and contractor were hired to build an $8 billion skyscraper in 5 years. After two years of construction using design plans that were only 40% complete, they tell their client there will be a 12 year-delay to work out the bugs in the design before the building could be open for business. In the real world of business the contractor and the management team would be fired, legal steps taken to recoup lost funds, and solutions would be found to get the project back on track. But, Hanford is not in the real world. It is instead a nirvana for the incompetent, where taxpayer-sponsored “cost-plus” contracting is “heads, I win, tails, you lose” for lucky private contractors and their public managers.
To move from analogy to the unfortunate facts of life at Hanford today, it is instructive to look at the U.S. Department of Energy management team overseeing the vitrification plant – the largest construction project at Hanford. The plant is supposed to one day convert the 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste stored in leaky tanks at Hanford into more manageable glass “logs.” In the late 1990’s, DOE committed to the people of the Northwest and Congress it would begin hot operation in 2002. Then delays and cost overruns occurred and DOE said it would open hot operation in 2007. DOE is now proposing to start making glass in 2019 with costs exceeding $12 billion.
The first delay extending the date from 2002 to 2007 was easy to accept because DOE only had 40% of the design complete. It will, after all, be the largest radioactive waste processing plant in the world handling the most deadly waste imaginable. But what can we say five years later, when the DOE is, again, proposing to delay the opening of this critical facility – this time until 2019?
After having so many delays, failures and cost overruns the State of Washington and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are ready to accept DOE’s proposal to delay the start up of operation of the vitrification plant till 2019. Given past management failure, why are they willing to trust DOE any longer? . Instead of accepting their excuses, shouldn’t Ecology, EPA and Congress be looking at changing the management at Hanford?
The original milestone for complete Hanford cleanup was supposed to be by 2028. DOE now says they want to extend that to 2052 and are hedging as to how “clean” they will leave the site when finished. The past shows us clearly that we have no basis for believing in DOE’s management skills, or their false timelines. DOE has failed as a management team and in the real world of business they would be fired.
With the current proposed delays the U.S. Department of Energy is not protecting our safety or our future security. I’ve spent the last 18 years watching their failures in managing large-scale projects or successfully employing cleanup technologies that get the job done. They have shown that they are more interested in extending the length of cleanup to protect their jobs, tinkering with innovative technologies instead of using existing proven technologies to cleanup the high level waste, the deep soil contamination and the groundwater at Hanford. These tactics and delays threaten our Columbia River, its people, and the other creatures that live in it and rely upon it, with a radioactive nightmare.
It is time for a new paradigm at Hanford. We call upon Congress to replace DOE management at Hanford with a management team whose sole purpose is to get the job done thoroughly and within an accelerated, but realistic, time frame. The interested local parties – the State of Washington, the State of Oregon, and the Columbia River Tribes – should oversee the work at Hanford, just as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council oversees the Bonneville Power Administration. This will guarantee that the focus remains on cleanup and that mission creep doesn’t again sidetrack our cleanup efforts.
I believe that with the right leadership, the vitrification of the 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste could start in 5 years, all the single shell rotting high level waste tanks would be cleaned out in 10 years. The ground water issues including the strontium-90 that is leaking into the Columbia River at the N-Reactor Area, the uranium in the 300 Area by the City of Richland that is contaminating the groundwater and the Columbia River, and the hundreds of burial site of what DOE calls transuranic (TRU) waste would be cleaned up within 10 years. Based upon my years as a watchdog of Hanford activity, I believe that the groundwater at Hanford could be cleaned up completely within my lifetime – another thirty years, or so, if I am fortunate – and that we would save billions of dollars by simply creating a management team whose sole focus is the cleanup of Hanford.
Columbia Riverkeeper
724 Oak Street
Hood River, OR 97031
(541) 387-3030
Fax (541) 387-3029
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