Washington state is still waiting for Energy Department contractor Washington River Protection Solutions to show its work on an estimate that equipping workers with respirators and other gear to protect them from vapors at the Hanford Site’s waste storage tank farms would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and add years to the site’s cleanup schedule.
Details were due Oct. 5 but have not arrived, the head of DOE’s Office of River Protection ackowledged in a Nov. 1 letter to the Washington Department of Ecology.
“This is due to the number of very complex variables and assumptions that must be considered in this matter,” ORP Manager Kevin Smith wrote in the missive to Alex Smith, manager of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program. “[A]s a result, ORP extended the response date and are working with WRPS to continue to clarify and refine its analysis.”
In September, the AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions sent DOE a report that said requiring workers at the tank farm to wear protective gear would delay the emptying of five single-shell Hanford tanks by one year to 2021, and the emptying of nine tanks in the A and AX tank farms by two years to 2026.Costs for these operations would rise between roughly $300 million and $750 million, the contractor said.
DOE and Washington state are battling in federal court over worker safety connected toalleged vapor exposures. Last week, a federal judge ruled Washington state may remain a plaintiff in the case, despite DOE’s argument that the state had no business in the litigation because only a narrow subset of its population is affected by any vapor leak.
The case is scheduled for a bench trial Sept. 18, 2017.
