By John Stang
For want of a quorum, the Hanford Advisory Board this week could not officially recommend that the Department of Energy do something about a radioactive waste tank leak reported in April and plan for future leaks the board feels are sure to follow.
DOE recently told the board that the terms of about half of its members have expired, and that the federal government has not formally reappointed these people to serve again.
In a virtual meeting Wednesday, DOE’s Hanford Manager Brian Vance told the board the delay is due to the Hanford Advisory Board being at least three times larger than other DOE site-specific advisory boards. Also, Vance said, the Biden administration is still getting up to speed in its first year.
The Hanford Advisory Board has 32 seats with a primary and alternate for each seat. The board represents a broad sample of the Hanford political spectrum, from government agencies to tribes to workers to environmentalist interests to the Tri-Cities business community.
A press release from Heart of America Northwest, one of the environmentalist groups represented on the board, said members have not been reappointed despite their applications being submitted to DOE at the beginning of 2021.
“This is not the first time that USDOE has delayed the renewal of Board members appointments under the Federal Advisory Committee Act for nine or more months, preventing the Board from meeting or acting. USDOE has repeatedly sought to remove Board members, and now to unilaterally appoint new seats without going through the consensus process that ensured maintaining a delicate balance of interests that has made the board successful,” Heart of America’s statement said.
The board hopes that DOE will have the appointments and reappointments made by its next full meeting in October or November. A specific meeting date had not been nailed down at deadline.
After several months of study, DOE announced in April that single-shell tank B-109 in east-central Hanford is a confirmed leaker, discharging 1,000 gallons annually. At least 3,100 gallons had seeped out at deadline, according to DOE estimates. The agency revealed the apparent leak in April after contractor Washington River Protection Solutions started a leak assessment in July 2020.
The leak was this year about 40 feet below the ground’s surface and roughly 200 feet above the aquifer. DOE officials estimate it will take 25 years for the fluids to reach the aquifer.
“B-109’s leak presents zero risk to the workforce and zero risk to the public,” Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board on Wednesday. The 3,100 gallons from the leaky tank amounts to a drop in the bucket in the northeastern section of central Hanford, where roughly 52 million gallons of various contaminants have already ended up in the ground, Vance said.
Getting Hanford’s vitrification facility up and running, which will let DOE solidify millions of gallons of tank waste, is a better use of limited funding than plugging the B-109 leak, said Vance.
DOE and the Washington Department of Ecology are trying to reach an agreement on dealing with Tank B-109. The ecology department’s David Bowen, nuclear program waste program manager, said the state is “not in total concurrence” with DOE’s stance. The state reserves the right to take an enforcement action if the two sides cannot reach an agreement on Tank B-109.
