The Richland Operations Office will review how its prime contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are passing down nuclear quality assurance requirements to subcontractors and qualifying them after questions were raised about the recently completed River Corridor Closure Contract. A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office audit report released Friday found quality-assurance weaknesses in Washington Closure Hanford subcontracts. Washington Closure — a partnership of AECOM, Bechtel, and CH2M Hill that managed the $2.9 billion closure project from 2005 to 2016 — had no comment.
Failing to pass down quality assurance requirements to subcontractors led to issues, including at the 618-10 Burial Ground, the report said, noting that the site contains some of the most hazardous wastes at Hanford. Radiation detection probes to identify the types of radioactive materials in vertical pipe units before remediation began failed calibration checks 92 percent of the time, the report said. However, the probes still were used to collect data. If certain nuclear quality assurance requirements had been in place, the probes could have been required to be removed from service until they were fixed, according to the report.
The audit report found Washington Closure also did not always effectively ensure that subcontractors could fully implement a quality assurance program. In November 2012, a Washington Closure subcontractor had a near-miss during construction of a temporary wall needed to help in lifting a 1,100-ton cement vault once used to store radioactive waste. The vault needed to be transported to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility in central Hanford for disposal. “Three days into construction, the wall collapsed, spilling more than 95 cubic yards of wet concrete and ecology blocks into a previously occupied work area,” the report said. The IG’s Office found that the root cause analysis of the event showed weaknesses in the subcontractor’s ability to follow a quality assurance program. The report recommended the Richland Operations Office evaluate the costs associated with the wall failure.
