The Department of Energy on Monday issued preliminary notices of violation to CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. over repeated incidents of radiological contamination spread at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Radioactive particles were found outside the established radiological control boundary of the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition site in 2017 and 2018. The Energy Department is proposing three Severity Level II violations and two Severity Level III violations, according to a letter from its Office of Enforcement to CH2M at Hanford.
The agency stopped short of proposing a civil penalty for the violations. It already docked CH2M’s contract fee for fiscal 2018 by $1.8 million over deficiencies associated with a contamination spread in December 2017. The department previously cut CH2M’s incentive fee by $1 million in fiscal 2017 over a contamination spread in June 2017. In both years, CH2M still received about $10 million for a wide variety of environmental remediation activities at Hanford.
The Energy Department also found that CH2M’s corrective action plan, despite some shortcomings, likely will be adequate to prevent a similar radiological event in the future.
“DOE considers the spread of radiological contamination outside of the established radiological boundary of the Plutonium Finishing Plant to be of high safety significance,” the letter says.
In December 2017, contamination was found next to administrative buildings, on workers’ cars, on government vehicles, and in office trailers where workers routinely ate their lunches. Eleven employees were found to have ingested or inhaled radiological particles in that event, on top of 31 employees during the 2017 contamination spread.