The Department of Energy’s Volpentest HAMMER Federal Training Center at the Hanford Site was praised at its 20th anniversary celebration Thursday by officials ranging from national and international organized labor leaders to the governor of Washington.
The 88-acre facility, a training center for Hanford workers, includes classrooms and an extensive set of training props, including: a burn building, a buried simulated waste site, a search and rescue building, 210 feet of piping for training on working in confined spaces, and multiple concrete pads for practicing the response to different types of fires and simulated wrecks involving hazardous or nuclear materials.
“I don’t think you can find a better training program than HAMMER,” said Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, in videotaped remarks. The training there is vitally important for the dangerous work at Department of Energy sites across the complex, he said.
Hanford training includes respiratory protection, confined space safety, electrical safety, radiation protection, fall protection, and hoisting and rigging. But the center has also grown to serve emergency responders beyond Hanford, including those working for local and state governments, other federal agencies, and the military. The center is operated by Hanford’s site-wide services contractor, Mission Support Alliance, and is expected to have more than 50,000 student days of training this year.
HAMMER (Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response) has helped improve safety at Hanford, said Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, who worked as a U.S. representative in the early 1990s to secure congressional approval for the training center.
Hanford workers face an “unbelievable number of known and unknown hazards on a daily basis” as cleanup progresses on the former plutonium production complex, said Dan Stepano, general president of the Operative Plasters’ and Cement Masons’ International Association of the United States and Canada. Eric Dean, general president of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers, said much has changed in the last 20 years. But HAMMER has adapted to changing global threats, federal government priorities, environmental cleanup methods, and technology, he said.
The formation of HAMMER was the first-of-its-kind partnership between management and union leadership, said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a video statement. The HAMMER Steering Committee features active participation from nine international union general presidents, according to Mission Support Alliance.
