Advisory Panel Calls for Conservative Approach for Central Area Cleanup
WC Monitor
4/17/2015
The Hanford Advisory Board is recommending that the Department of Energy take a conservative approach as it prepares to make plans to clean up the innermost 10 square miles of Hanford. Unlike much of the rest of the 586 square miles of Hanford, the inner 10 square miles is expected to be off limits to the public even after active environmental cleanup concludes. The land at the center of Hanford was used to chemically process irradiated fuel and dispose of waste. Most of Hanford’s major production and waste disposal facilities, except those located in the area along the Columbia River, are clustered there. “A lot of hard decisions are left to come,” said board member Shelley Cimon, as the advisory board discussed the issue at its April meeting. Central Hanford includes burial grounds with 42 miles of trenches, some of them over ponds used for waste disposal, she said. The PUREX tunnels are there, with high-level radioactive waste sealed inside. Other waste was disposed of in underground caissons, she said. The area also has contaminated soil under single-shell waste tanks that have leaked.
Cleanup of the innermost area could be a decade or more in the future. But as much of the work to clean up land along the Columbia River at Hanford is being completed, DOE and its regulators are preparing to make plans for cleanup of the inner area. Officials want plans in place when the Hanford budget allows work to be done there. DOE has come up with some tentative guidelines for the start of planning. Along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology, DOE has discussed the guidelines with the Hanford Advisory Board over several months and asked for input.
The development of guidelines is commendable, the advisory board said in advice sent to the three agencies at the conclusion of its meeting. But the board is concerned that the proposed guidelines do not fully characterize, quantify or address the risk to future generations. “These guidelines underestimate the potential for failure in cleanup, and they ignore the real, long-term costs of institutional controls,” the board said in the letter.
DOE Currently Planning to Cleanup Central Area to Industrial Standards
The cleanup standard planned for the central 10 square miles is industrial, which assumes that no one would live there but that work might be done there during the day. The inner area is planned to be used long term for waste management. It includes Hanford’s Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility and also could include the shells of the site’s 177 underground waste tanks, with residual waste left after they are emptied, if the decision is made to bury them in place. Cleanup decisions have not been made for most of Hanford’s large chemical processing plants in central Hanford. But cleanup could follow the plan for the first one to be tackled, the 810-foot-long U Plant. The U Plant plan calls for placing equipment in the plant’s below-deck cells and partially collapsing and covering its walls.
The advisory board wants DOE, EPA and the state to evaluate future risk in the center of Hanford based on a broader scenario than industrial use as it sets environmental cleanup standards. The tribes and DOE disagree on whether treaty rights for activities such as gathering food extend to all of Hanford, including central Hanford where land will continue to be used for waste management. Until the issue is settled by the courts or Congress, DOE should consider assessing risk based on tribal activities, according to notes summarizing early advisory board discussions.
How Deep Should Cleanup Go?
DOE has floated the idea of studying the cleanup of contaminants down to 10 feet below the ground surface in addition to studying cleanup down to 15 feet deep. There are pipelines used to move waste deeper than 10 feet underground, Cimon said. There also are junction boxes where leaks occurred. They were covered with asphalt to protect workers so plutonium production could continue with little interruption, she said. Setting a depth for cleanup is not reasonable without a better understanding of the type and quantities of waste and an understanding of contamination in the soil and in the groundwater in central Hanford, the board said in its advice. The board also is concerned that studies have shown native plants, such as old growth sage, may have roots that reach more than 10 to 15 feet underground, Cimon said.
The board recommends that the same observational approach used on contaminant cleanup closer to the Columbia River be used. Near the river digging continued until cleanup requirements were met or there was no technology left that made further cleanup possible, Cimon said. The board said it was concerned about the lack of focus on contaminants in the vadose zone which could migrate to groundwater.
Board Raises Concerns Over Groundwater Cleanup Standards
The board questioned a proposal to require compliance with cleanup standards for groundwater only at the boundary of the inner area. The board wants compliance at the boundary of each operable unit within the inner area. In time some areas of undisturbed sagebrush might be excluded from the 10-square-mile footprint of the inner area, requiring less acreage to be monitored and maintained as an industrial area, the board said. Large pieces of undisturbed shrub steppe habitat should be identified and protected, the board said. That could reduce DOE’s natural resource damage liability.
DOE Offering New Tour at Hanford Looking at Pre-Manhattan Project Era
WC Monitor
4/17/2015
A new Hanford tour focusing on the life of settlers before the federal government took over their homes, businesses and farms for the Manhattan Project has been announced by the Department of Energy. Registration will open at 8 a.m. May 12. Seats may be reserved for tours from May 26 through Oct. 21 at www.hanford.gov; by calling 509-376-1647 or in person at the B Reactor Tour Headquarters, 2000 Logston Blvd., Richland. Two other sets of Hanford tours this year have already been announced and registration is open at the same website. They cover Hanford cleanup work and historic B Reactor.
The new tour is possible now that much of the Hanford River Corridor cleanup is nearing completion. “These tours will showcase the hard work, innovation and perseverance of the families who lived here before the government’s occupation of the land,” said Colleen French, the DOE Hanford national park program manager. “Their struggles, accomplishments and, ultimately their loss of the land to the Manhattan Project effort, are an important part of the Hanford story.” Much of what is included on the tour could be part of a new Manhattan Project National Historical Park with historic sites at Hanford, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.
The new tour will include a stop at the Bruggemann Warehouse, a river-rock covered warehouse that was seized by the government from the Bruggemann family during World War II. The tour will stop at the Hanford High School built in 1916 in the town of Hanford and the tiny White Bluffs Bank, the last remaining building in the town of White Bluffs. Sidewalks still make paths through the brush there. Visitors will see the White Bluffs Ferry Crossing at the Columbia River and the head wall of the canal system that brought water to the family orchards and farms. The four-hour tour also will include some information on environmental cleanup work. Participants may be citizens of any country, and children over the age of 12 can participate if they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.
