The Department of Energy and several other parties on Wednesday signed a settlement agree to a 3-year-old federal lawsuit seeking better protection from chemical vapors for workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The agreement, if approved by the court, would freeze the case as Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) makes further improvements to better safeguard personnel from vapors associated with radioactive waste held in underground tanks.
The former plutonium production complex holds 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste in the tanks.
Hanford workers have complained of symptoms such as shortness of breath, headaches, nosebleeds, coughing, and a metallic taste in their mouths after exposure to vapors. Some tank farm workers developed serious respiratory and neurological illnesses, sometimes after decades of work, including the brain disease toxic encephalopathy, according to the plaintiffs.
In September 2015, the state of Washington, watchdog group Hanford Challenge, and Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 sued DOE and WRPS.
The improvements required in the settlement agreement include continued testing and possible implementation of the first system at Hanford to destroy chemical vapors. If testing proves out, the technology could be in use in three years at the tank farms, said Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson. The system pulls tank vapors through filters into combustion chambers that can greatly reduce chemical concentrations. Filters would trap other harmful chemicals, including mercury.
Testing also is underway on a vapor control system that uses a high-velocity fan to mix chemical vapors with air and then expels the mixture from a stack at high speeds above workers’ breathing zones. Other settlement directives include improvements to monitoring and evaluation of hazard controls for waste-disturbing activity. The Energy Department said WRPS has already installed public address and event notification systems in the tank farms to provide immediate notification of possible vapors to workers.
The Energy Department must pay the state and Hanford Challenge $925,000 for their costs in bringing the lawsuit, Ferguson said. Washington River Protection Solutions must sustain current safety measures, including supplied air respirators for most tank farm work, in place and improve the release of information on vapor events and worker health monitoring.
There was no immediate word on when Judge Thomas Rice, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, would rule on the agreement.
The settlement agreement is contingent on another federal judge granting a state and DOE motion in a separate lawsuit over the consent decree that governs environmental remediation at Hanford. The parties will ask for certain milestones for retrieving waste from some single shell tanks to be extended. The motion has not been filed and details were not available Wednesday.
