Staff Reports
WC Monitor
11/6/2015
Proposed changes being considered to the Hanford Tri-Party Agreement are not ideal, but they reflect reality, said Hanford officials during the initial public discussions this week on change packages covering much of the remaining central Hanford work assigned to the Department of Energy Richland Operations Office. Some milestones will be delayed by almost a decade and others will be reset, but not until years from now when more is known about contamination in central Hanford. The proposal, which followed negotiations by DOE and its regulators on 64 milestones, was met with concern at discussions with the public and stakeholders this week.
Many of those who have advocated for Hanford cleanup will no longer be alive by the time the work covered by the change packages is completed, said Susan Leckband, a former Hanford worker and the former chairwoman of the Hanford Advisory Board. She was on the agenda of a public meeting near Hanford to provide the community’s perspective after government officials spoke. She has worked in some of the huge processing plants, called canyons, where some of the last cleanup work would be completed under the new proposals. Now DOE is required to submit dates for completion of canyon cleanup in fall 2022. The proposed new deadlines would postpone that until 2026. Leckband said she was not too concerned about that delay because the concrete buildings should keep contamination well contained. However, the delay will create other costs, such as the need to replace roofs on the canyons, which are hundreds of feet long. REDOX, the shortest of the canyons, is 470 feet long and 160 feet wide. The proposed deadlines cover REDOX, PUREX and B Plant. Cleanup already has started on U Plant and the fifth canyon at Hanford, T Plant, is still being used for work with radioactive materials.
The deadline to complete the remedial investigation and feasibility study for most or the remaining cleanup work in central Hanford, excluding tanks and canyons, would be posted from the end of 2016 to June 2026 under the proposed changes. “That’s a very long delay, a decade,” Leckband said. “People’s commitments change in a decade. The agencies change.” The Central Plateau of Hanford has complex cleanup challenges and individual investigations could take several years to complete, said John Price, the Tri-Party Agreement section manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, explaining the 10-year delay. The investigations completed by 2026 would inform decisions on when the actual cleanup would need to be completed. It’s listed as “to be determined” on fact sheets distributed to the public, replacing the current deadline for completing cleanup of September 2024. The central Hanford cleanup work includes about 400 buildings and 1,500 waste sites.
At a separate meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board, members questioned the wisdom of replacing firm deadlines with a plan to set them when more information is known. Some members said DOE should make its best guess, arguing that since the milestones were set based on an anticipated Richland Operations Office budgets of $1 billion to $1.2 billion annually, officials should have some idea of when work could be completed. Dennis Faulk, the Environmental Protection Agency Hanford program manager, said that river corridor work, which is largely completed now, will take a total of 30 years start to finish. Central Hanford has at least as much work, he said. “Based on history, do I really want to set a date 30 to 40 years in the future to complete this work?” he asked. “Or do I actually want to have more firm schedules based on all the information I collect over the next 10 years to set it?”
The milestone changes also include a three year extension to fall 2021 for some key work yet to be completed on the river corridor. It was the shortest delay proposed among major changes, but still was too long for some people at the public meeting. Every dollar should go to cleanup by the river until it Is completed, said local resident Sherry Gosseen. “The 324 Building you could stand in it and spit in the Columbia River,” Leckband said. Cleanup of the building was delayed after a spill of cesium and strontium was found beneath it. “If that leaks into the river, it affects thousands of lives. It’s dangerous and I think that that really takes priority,” Leckband said. The 2021 deadline would cover cleanup of the spill beneath the building and removal of the building. It also would cover cleanup of the high hazard 618-11 Burial Ground, which is near the river just off the parking lot of the Columbia Generating Station, a commercial nuclear power plant on leased Hanford land. It should be a priority because of its proximity to the many workers there, Leckband said.
DOE has fallen behind schedule on central Hanford cleanup as its budget has been focused on cleanup of the river corridor over the last decade, said EPA, state and DOE officials. “Now we are in a situation that we have milestones that can’t be met,” said Emerald Laija, an EPA scientist. The new set of deadlines is intended to mesh with other milestones for the Richland Operations Office, including those for transuranic waste that will be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and for removing sludge from the K West Basin and treating it for disposal. It also is intended to provide a stable work force at Hanford, keeping workers with extensive training working steadily.
A more deliberate approach to treatment is planned for central Hanford than for the river corridor. Because of the risk to the river, waste was dug up and then sampled. But in central Hanford waste, much of it from chemical processing of irradiated fuel, may be more complex and levels of contamination may be greater. Along the river, some waste was dug up down to just below the groundwater level of about 85 feet. But in central Hanford the soil can have contaminants as much as 300 feet down to groundwater. Cleanup also will include 43 miles of unlined disposal trenches.
Additional public hearings are planned Nov. 17 in Seattle, Nov. 18 in Portland and Nov. 19 in Hood River, Ore., with times and addresses posted on the calendar at www.hanford.gov. The meetings, announced in late October, do not give stakeholder groups enough time to review proposals, help their members understand issues and give them sufficient advance notice of the meetings, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest. Fewer people than usual can be expected at the meetings later this month, he said. About 50 people attended the first meeting, held near Hanford this week, with attendance bolstered by a Hanford Advisory Board meeting the same day. Public comments may be sent until Dec. 11 to [email protected].
