The Oregon Department of Energy’s top specialist on environmental remediation at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in neighboring Washington state is preparing to retire.
Oregon DOE Nuclear Safety Division Administrator Ken Niles is calling it a career effective Aug. 31, after 19 years in the post and 31 years with the state agency.
Niles said he leads a “small but mighty” staff of a half-dozen people who monitor cleanup at the former plutonium production complex located just 35 miles from the Oregon border.
The Columbia River flows past Hanford and serves as much of the dividing line between the two states. Oregon want to ensure that federal remediation decisions will protect the river, Niles said.
The Oregon agency submits letters and position papers about Hanford to the DOE Office of Environmental Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other entities. It also acts as an information clearing house of sorts for Hanford, and has a two-year budget of about $2.3 million that is 60% funded by the federal Department of Energy.
Last month, Niles’ division filed comments with the two federal entities and the Washington state Department of Ecology outlining Oregon’s budget priorities for Hanford.
There are 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in Hanford’s underground tanks. The Oregon DOE’s top cleanup goals over the past 30 years have been vitrification of waste, and taking measures to contain and clean up contaminated groundwater, according to the comments.
The tanks are located about 200 feet above the groundwater, and roughly 7 to 12 miles from the Columbia River. While groundwater under the tank area takes several years to reach the river, contaminants from other parts of Hanford can get there in just weeks or months, according to the Oregon DOE website. More than 70 square miles of groundwater is contaminated above federal regulatory standards with pollutants such as carbon tetrachloride, chromium, and nitrate left over from weapons work.
“We’ve seen significant progress on groundwater remediation in recent years and it does appear likely that limited tank waste vitrification may finally be near,” Niles said in the letter. The Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel is scheduled to start turning low-activity waste into a stable glass-like substance by the end of 2023.
Niles said he is happy that demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford is virtually complete, except for removal and disposal of debris, which was taking place just prior to the facility shifting into minimal operations in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has been on hold since then, he added.
Niles said by phone he hopes the federal government will complete transfer of cesium and strontium capsules to dry storage on-site in 2025. More than 1,900 capsules — 1,335 cesium capsules and 601 strontium capsules — of the highly radioactive material are currently kept under 13 feet of water in a concrete pool at the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility in central Hanford, according to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The material was extracted from high-level radioactive waste (HLW) tanks on-site in order to reduce the heat of the tanks.
A subcontractor was hired in October 2019 to build the dry cask storage pad.
Other chores handled by the Oregon nuclear division include oversight of transport of radioactive material through the state. The agency’s website says about 400 shipments of radioactive waste travel through the state to a disposal site during an average year. Much of the total comes from commercial low-level waste facilities near the Hanford Site, such as those run by Perma-Fix Northwest and US Ecology, according to an Oregon DOE report.
Nuclear haulers need a permit from the state to move such material through Oregon. The state also helped develop transport routes and monitored shipments of transuranic waste through Oregon until Hanford suspended shipping the material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in 2011, in part to concentrate on more pressing remediation issues, Niles said. Hanford is expected to resume WIPP shipments later in this decade and ultimately displace the Idaho National Laboratory as the top shipper of such material, Niles said.
Since 1986, the U.S. Navy has disposed of reactor compartments from deactivated nuclear-powered warships at the Hanford Site, and they are transported via the Columbia River.
The Oregon DOE division also monitors issues stemming from the Energy Northwest utility’s Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant located on land leased from the Hanford Site in Benton County, Wash. Oregon DOE has a nuclear emergency preparedness program in case of a significant accident, such as a fire or explosion.
A onetime television news reporter, Niles came to the state agency in 1989 as a nuclear safety information officer, writing emergency preparedness news releases for communities surrounding the now-retired Trojan nuclear power plant.
While Trojan stopped operating in 1993, 34 dry casks of spent nuclear fuel are stored on a concrete pad at the plant site. The spent fuel will remain there until the federal government opens a national spent fuel repository or an interim consolidated storage facility to take the material.
Niles said he had hoped to see the Trojan nuclear waste moved out of Oregon before he retired, but that won’t happen. The state official said the application deadline for his position closed in late July and he hopes a new person will be retained before he leaves.
