Department of Energy management at the Hanford Site is not doing enough about a leak from a single-shell, high-level waste tank made public in April 2021, according to a Washington state lawmaker and some other members of the Hanford Advisory Board.
Hanford bosses and the Washington state Department of Ecology lack a sense of urgency about the leak at tank B-109, Rep. Gerry Pollet (D), who represents the state’s 46th legislative district, told Weapons Complex Monitor by phone Wednesday.
Pollet, who is also executive director of a Hanford environmental group, Heart of America Northwest, and a member of the tank waste committee for Hanford Advisory Board (HAB), said the agencies should do more than monitor the leak.
The DOE “has repeatedly stated that it intends to do nothing in response to the leak,” Pollett wrote in an email this week. “It has offered numerous outrageous and erroneous claims to justify inaction, such as repeatedly stating that the leak is ‘very small’ and ‘small in comparison’ to prior contamination from tanks so inaction is justified,” Pollet said.
In a July letter to Gov. Jay Inslee (D), Pollet also said the leak is much worse than DOE acknowledges and urged the governor to go with a “zero tolerance” policy for tank waste leaks at Hanford.
So far, however, the HAB has decided not to pass on advice from its Pollet-led waste committee to DOE.
During its meetings on Dec. 15-16, the HAB sent back to the waste committee for additional edits and revisions a draft advice document urging DOE to come up with a plan to deal with current and future leaks of single-shell tanks (SSTs) at the former plutonium production complex. A reworked version of that advice paper is expected to be brought back to the full HAB during its next meeting in March.
“There is currently no plan to proactively mitigate current and future SST leakage,” the draft advice document reads. “While it is encouraging that Ecology and DOE have begun formal discussions concerning the response to the B-109 leak and the potential development of a site-wide leak response plan for all SSTs, the Board believes these discussions should have a firm deadline.”
The DOE said back in April that the leak, believed to be less than four gallons daily, poses no increased health and safety risk to workers or the public around Hanford. Given the cleanup site is already heavily contaminated, the B-109 leak is a minor contribution to the risk level there, DOE’s Hanford site manager Brian Vance told the HAB in June.
A DOE spokesperson at Hanford offered a similar assessment in a Thursday email.
“The Department has been following well-established Hanford tank integrity and risk reduction processes that include operating a pump and treat system in the area which removes contaminants that could reach groundwater, continuing to monitor the tank” and working with the state to minimize risk, the spokesperson said.
As for the state, Ecology’s nuclear waste program team has worked with DOE since the leak was announced in April, said an Ecology spokesman Ryan Miller. The Tri-Party Agreement lays out the process to develop a response “and the parties are working to wrap up those discussions in the next few weeks,” Miller added.
“My sense is there is general displeasure with DOE’s ‘it’s not a big deal,’ reaction to the leak,” Liz Mattson, senior program strategist for the Hanford Challenge citizens group, and also a member of the HAB tank waste committee, wrote in a Thursday email.
There is disagreement within HAB, however, on whether more action on tank leaks might siphon potential resources away from other Hanford priorities, such as the start of direct feed low-activity waste vitrification at the Waste Treatment Plant by the end of 2023, Mattson said. The DOE has suggested as much in the past. “No one wants that,” Mattson said.
“I think DOE is taking the right approach with the B-109 tank leak at this point,” said David Reeploeg, of the Tri-Cities Development Council and the Hanford Communities group. “If there were unlimited resources it would be great to see them take additional actions now, but the reality is that there are budget constraints and we have to make tradeoffs,” said Reeploeg, in a Thursday email.
