Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Tuesday he plans to look into the transfer of the Energy Department project manager for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP), at the Hanford Site in Washington state, shortly after he raised concerns about missing documentation on steel being used at the facility.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill, Wyden suggested the situation might be a “whistleblower story.” That’s not the case, said William “Bill” Hamel, who sent the letter from his now-former post as DOE assistant manager and federal project director for the facility being built and commissioned by Bechtel National at the nuclear cleanup site in Washington state.
In the March 6 letter to Bechtel, Hamel said “the quality records needed to demonstrate that the important-to-safety structural steel could perform its safety function were either missing or of indeterminate quality. This condition is a potentially unrecoverable quality issue.” The letter was distributed to news media by the watchdog group Hanford Challenge, which called the records issue “a serious programmatic failure.”
The Waste Treatment Plant is being built to convert up to 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste stored at Hanford into a glass form for safe disposal. Under federal court order, treatment of low-activity waste must begin by 2023 and the plant must be fully operational by 2036.
Speaking to Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee budget hearing on Tuesday, Wyden said “in plain English” the letter seemed to say the plant is at risk of not opening.
But Brian Vance, manager of the Hanford DOE Office of River Protection, said the issue was not serious enough to imperil the plant schedule. “No, I don’t think it is a significant issue,” he said Monday during a question-and-answer session at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz. “I think we are going to find, and the evaluation has already been ongoing … that paperwork will be identified” and the issue will be closed without risk to the project or schedule, he said.
The letter was strongly worded to get Bechtel to focus on the gaps in quality records, and it brought results, Hamel told Weapons Complex Monitor on the sidelines of the Phoenix conference. The Energy Department now is requiring Bechtel to investigate the facts and circumstances around the procurement, receipt, and acceptance of structural steel. The March 6 letter set a deadline of 30 days for Bechtel to submit a report on the investigation, including a plan to fix any deficiencies.
Bechtel, which said it had already identified the issue, expects to have documentation in order for DOE’s review in the coming week. The company said in a March 16 statement that management had already met with department officials and “notified them we have identified and addressed the paperwork mentioned in the letter.” Bechtel said the safety and quality of the structural steel was never in question.
“We have documentation that demonstrates the nuclear-grade structural steel meets project requirements,” Bechtel said. “We are completing our review of the documentation for a few remaining commercial-grade steel items.”
Commercial-grade steel could be used in areas of the plant not associated with nuclear processing, such as staircases. A higher safety and documentation standard must be met for steel in areas of the plant where radioactive waste will be processed. The plant construction relies heavily on steel, with just one of its four major facilities, the Low-Activity Waste Facility, using 6,200 tons of structural steel.
There are options if adequate documentation for some of the steel cannot be produced. Bechtel could ask the steel vendor for documentation, or in a less likely scenario could analyze the steel to determine its content and verify its quality.
At the Senate committee hearing Tuesday, Wyden called the issue one of accountability and safety. He pointed out that Hamel had been transferred from his job as the federal project director for the vitrification plant to another DOE job at Hanford less than two weeks after sending the letter. That did not seem like a coincidence, Wyden said.
Wyden asked the energy secretary to instruct Hamel to write a detailed explanation for the Senate panel about the “potentially devastating” safety documentation issue at the $17 billion plant. Perry agreed, and said he would give Hamel permission to meet with senators on the committee and answer questions without pressure from DOE.
No timing was discussed for the meeting, and Hamel later said he would be available to speak to senators. But he strongly refuted any suggestion his job move was in retaliation for writing the letter, which he called part of DOE’s ongoing oversight of Bechtel. This week Hamel started a new job for the Hanford DOE Richland Operations Office as assistant manager for safety and environment. A DOE senior executive, Hamel said it was a lateral transfer after five years assigned to the vitrification plant and that he knew about it before sending the letter.
Thomas Fletcher, who was deputy manager for DOE’s Richland Operations Office at Hanford, took over as assistant manager of the vitrification plant this week. The change in responsibilities was announced in a memo to Hanford workers that described the plant as entering a new phase. It is moving from mostly construction to an increasing emphasis on startup and commissioning to prepare for the initiation of waste treatment as soon as the close of 2021. Bechtel National and the Office of River Protection also named new top management in late 2017, with both organizations saying they were picked, in part, to lead the vitrification plant project into its new phase.
Assuring the quality of construction and equipment at the Waste Treatment Plant has been an issue for several years, with structural steel only the latest focus. A footnote to Government Accountability Office written testimony for a March 14 hearing of the Senate Armed Forces strategic forces subcommittee noted the congressional auditor is completing a report on the plant’s quality assurance program. It did not give a date for release of the report.
Quality assurance was among several issues that led to a $125 million settlement by Bechtel and WTP subcontractor AECOM with the U.S. Justice Department in 2016, with the companies saying they settled only to avoid a protracted legal battle. Among the allegations, the federal government said welding, duct work, and some equipment had not been shown to meet nuclear quality requirements.
At least three DOE Office of Inspector General audits, including reports issued in 2012 and 2013, questioned programs at the Hanford vitrification plant intended to ensure construction and equipment meet required quality standards.
