After reviewing a reply from the Energy Department this month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is still not satisfied the agency and contractor Bechtel National are doing enough to verify the safety of structural steel used in construction of the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
“It’s completely unacceptable that the Department of Energy and the private contractor are still unable to produce the paperwork to show whether the steel used at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is safe,” Wyden said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson Tuesday.
“This is not a simple filing issue,” the lawmaker added. “If the quality of the steel can’t be certified as meeting safety standards, then the facility can’t operate. I will stay at this until the Energy Department is able to produce a full accounting and explanation for how safe this steel is.”
The steel issue is key to safety at the plant being built to convert up to 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste into a glass form for disposal.
Earlier this spring, DOE said Bechtel had failed to produce documentation showing steel pieces being used at the plant meet standards for the nuclear industry quality assurance (NQA-1) set by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Standards for steel at nuclear facilities is more stringent than standards for commercial steel, sources say.
Structural steel provides the “skeleton of the building,” at WTP, a source said. Other uses at the plant include staircases and handrails.
During a March 20 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Wyden asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry for additional information about structural steel issues raised in a letter to the company from DOE’s then-WTP Federal Project Director Bill Hamel. The department official said at the time much documentation was either missing or of questionable quality.
Wyden also questioned why Hamel was transferred not long after sending the letter. Hamel, however, told Weapons Complex Monitor in March the lateral transfer was in the works before he signed the letter. He is now assistant manager for safety and environment at the Richland Operations Office at Hanford.
The Energy Department subsequently submitted a fact sheet, dated April 12, to Wyden’s office. It says Bechtel has procured over 24,000 pieces of structural steel for the Low-Activity Waste (LAW) and Analytical Laboratory (LAB) sections of the plant.
The DOE fact sheet says, among other things, the missing records for the two key areas have all been located. DOE’s Office of River Protection and Bechtel have formed a six-person team to review the records and verify the contractor’s corrective actions.
“Bechtel has provided evidence to the Department of Energy that all records are available in its records system showing that the nuclear-grade and commercial-grade structural steel for the Analytical Laboratory and Low-Activity Waste Facility meets NQA-1 standards,” said Bechtel spokeswoman Staci West in a Thursday email. “We are supporting DOE as it reviews and verifies the documentation for nuclear-grade and commercial-grade structural steel for Lab and LAW.”
Initially, Bechtel could “readily trace” more than 90 percent of the material test reports from vendors for either of the two sections, according to the DOE fact sheet. But on March 26, the company informed the department’s Office of River Protection at Hanford the missing reports had been located, DOE said in the fact sheet.
In addition, Bechtel has concluded most of the safety documentation for steel pieces associated with the Pretreatment and High-Level Waste (HLW) sections of the Waste Treatment Plant can be traced.
The Energy Department and Bechtel have previously said the safety documentation exists but was filed in various places.
Bechtel has cited several causes of the documentation problem including inconsistencies and errors in how the paperwork was handled by vendors, and how the reports were entered into the company’s document system.
