DOE Agrees to Pay $44,000 Fine Over Waste Storage Violations
WC Monitor
1/30/2015
The Department of Energy has agreed to pay a $44,722 penalty to resolve more violations of waste storage requirements at Hanford, as alleged by the Environmental Protection Agency. The two agencies signed a consent agreement this week, with DOE neither admitting nor denying violations. The penalty follows a $136,000 penalty DOE agreed to pay in 2013, also related to storing waste at Hanford, but DOE did not meet all the requirements that were part of that settlement, according to the EPA.
In 2013, EPA told DOE it needed to follow the same procedures required of private businesses that store waste. If storage is not used for more than a year, it must give notice to start closing the waste storage unit or request an extension to continue using it. DOE then had waste stored in five areas inside and outdoors at T Plant in central Hanford, plus additional sites at the Central Waste Complex and near some burial trenches for a total of eight units EPA said were not authorized for the storage of waste. DOE agreed in 2013 to submit permit documents, including a closure plan, for the eight areas to the Washington State Department of Ecology within 120 days. DOE submitted the plan by the deadline, but EPA found the plan did not include important elements. It did not have a detailed description of how the waste would be moved and disposed of or how the eight sites would be decontaminated, according to the agreement. It also did not specify the time for closing each area. DOE is now working with the Washington State Department of Ecology to amend the plan to include required information.
DOE Accused of Moving Waste Drums to Unapproved Area
In a second violation alleged by EPA, DOE is accused of moving 136 drums of waste from an area covered by a permit for storing the waste to an area where waste storage had not been approved. The 55-gallon drums were stored outside the Effluent Treatment Facility in central Hanford and held powder with mixed waste removed from waste water at the plant. Because workers inside the treatment facility could be exposed to radiation from the containers, the drums were moved to a nearby area that was not authorized for storage, creating a new storage area without applying for a permit, according to EPA. The drums were moved on April 30, 2013, when discussions about proper waste storage were underway for the settlement agreement reached in June 2013. An inspection in August 2013 found them to be outside approved storage areas, according to EPA.
EPA said in 2013 that handling of radioactive and hazardous waste could not be done too carefully and that strict compliance with requirements was the only acceptable path. The latest agreement is “part of a continuing process of improving compliance and communication with DOE’s regulators,” DOE said in a statement this week. “We look forward to continued discussions with EPA on compliance and cleanup activities.”
Mission Support Alliance Names New President
WC Monitor
1/30/2015
Bill Johnson will take over as president of Hanford’s Mission Support Alliance Feb. 2. He will replace Frank Armijo, who is relocating to Rockville, Md., where he will provide corporate oversight of Mission Support Alliance, Hanford’s support services contractor, along with other responsibilities as vice president of energy solutions for Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions. Johnson brings 22 years of professional experience, including more than 10 years in leadership roles within Lockheed Martin to MSA. He previously served as vice president of business services for Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions, responsible for operations services to PSEG Long Island and the Long Island Power Authority’s 1.1 million electric utility customers. Before that he served as director of professional services, leading a portfolio of contracts in support of Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Department of Labor, Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense and other government and commercial clients. He also has served as director of business operations for two Lockheed business portfolios. “Leading a proven team like MSA in support of this important mission is an exciting opportunity,” Johnson said. “I will ensure that we remain committed to the partnerships we have developed with DOE and the site contractors.”
Armijo has been president of Mission Support Alliance since 2010, after previously serving in leadership roles with Lockheed Martin for 15 years. “I am proud of the work and service we have established,” Armijo said. “I am especially proud of the people and leadership we have developed with the utmost regard to safety, security, service and cost savings.” Stacey Charboneau, the manager of the DOE Richland Operations Office, praised Armijo’s leadership, saying “his team provided the infrastructure and support services we needed to keep our cleanup contractors focused on cleanup. In addition, the company has supported DOE in identifying efficiencies and cost saving initiatives.” Armijo will still have some continued contact with Hanford in his oversight role in Maryland, said Carl Adrian, president of the Tri-City Development Council. “He will still do good things for us,” Adrian said.
Armijo, a native of the Tri-Cities, built a reputation of civic leadership while working at Hanford. The son of migrant farm workers, he was the first in his family to attend college and has been a strong supporter of Tri-City education programs. In addition to being a former chairman of the TRIDEC board and a longtime board member, he led the higher education committee as it worked to persuade the state Legislature to expand Washington State University Tri-Cities into a four-year college, Adrian said. Armijo has served on the board of trustees for Columbia Basin College, which he attended, and helped found programs promoting reading and honoring scholastic achievement among Hispanic students.
100-N Area Cleanup Almost Done
WC Monitor
1/30/2015
Cleanup of the 100-N Area at Hanford is nearly complete. Some 114 buildings and related facilities around the N Reactor have been torn down and 107 waste sites have been cleaned up. “Right now you go out there and the only existing building is the reactor cocoon,” said Nina Menard, project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology. “[Land] has been recontoured. It has been revegetated. As time goes on I think it will do very well.” What remains of the reactor now stands in a landscape colored yellow by straw crimped into the soil. The reactor has been cocooned since 2012, with just its core and an attached heat exchanger building once use in electricity production remaining. Other attached buildings were torn down.
The most recent work has been to restore the industrial area around the reactor, which has had hard use for decades, to shrub steppe habitat. By September, 98 remediated waste sites had been backfilled with 726,000 tons of material. In some places the ground was backfilled to as much as 14 percent below grade to leave a more natural landscape. Between N Reactor and the Columbia River, crews put in stakes to show how deep the fill soil should be placed in different areas to create the final contoured landfill. The disturbed soil was replanted this winter with more than 45,000 native plants and 1,500 pounds of seed. Then more than 100 tons of straw were pushed into the ground to keep seed from blowing away with the desert wind. With little cleanup work being done now, herds of deer and elk have been seen moving across the area and eagles are using the raptor poles along the Columbia River, not far from where a 62-foot-high guard tower once stood over the river.
Two Waste Sites Remain
Two waste sites remain near N Reactor that still must be cleaned up, Menard said. They’ve been left for last because they are in the area near the reactor where the Ice Age floods formed conical mounds in giant ripples across the ground. They have cultural significance to area tribes that call them Mooli Mooli. Work on one of the remaining waste sites, less than an acre once used as a military dump site, is nearly completed. After the two sites are cleaned up, some load out and parking areas used for cleanup will be replanted along with them. Planting is done from late fall to early spring to take advantage of winter moisture, making that work outside the scope of Washington Closure Hanford’s current contract. Its contract expires at the end of September, and the Department of Energy has yet to announce whether the contract will be extended to allow Washington Closure to finish remaining cleanup work along the Columbia River or another contractor will be assigned the remaining work.
Bioventing Being Used to Address Fuel Contamination
Work started by Washington Closure to clean up fuel oil and diesel contamination near N Reactor is already continuing under CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Much of the contamination is 65 to 75 feet deep in the soil in places where it spilled from transfer pipes and storage tanks. N Reactor relied on the fuel oil and diesel for auxiliary power and to run a series of pumps and facilities near the reactor. A process called bioventing is being used and is working efficiently and effectively, Menard said. Bacteria feed on the fuel, but have used up most of the oxygen in the soil that they require. A series of blowers pushes oxygen into injection wells to spread out in the porous ground. N Reactor operations also left radioactive strontium contamination in soil and groundwater near the Columbia River. It’s being trapped with a partial apatite barrier to chemically bind up strontium before it reaches the river.
N Reactor was the newest of Hanford’s nine plutonium production reactors and its heat-exchange cooling system passed the same water through the reactor about 100 times, rather than the single pass made by cooling water in Hanford’s older reactors. The result was less water discharged with chemicals such a hexavalent chromium to the environment, but the multiple passes meant that the cooling water had higher concentrations of radionuclides, such as strontium, than water discharged from other reactors. N Reactor also was the longest operating production reactor at Hanford. It holds a place in the nation’s history after John F. Kennedy visited just four months before he was assassinated. He spoke to a crowd of 37,000 people allowed onto Hanford in 1963 to see him commemorate the start of the reactor’s plutonium production operations and break ground for the reactor’s power-generating component.
