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| | | published Tuesday, June 21, 2011 | 910 Views :: 0 Comments |
June 20, 2011
Action Alert from Hanford Challenge
A federal agency tasked with
investigating nuclear safety at federal facilities issued a strongly-worded
letter to the Secretary of Energy on June 9, 2011 finding that “the safety culture at the Waste Treatment Plant is in need of prompt,
major improvement and that corrective actions will only be successful and
enduring if championed by the Secretary of Energy.” The
Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB, the Board) interviewed 45
witnesses and examined 30,000 pages of documents during its investigation.
DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur wrote: “The Board's investigative record
demonstrates that both DOE and contractor project management behaviors
reinforce a subculture at WTP that deters the timely reporting,
acknowledgement, and ultimate resolution of technical safety concerns.”
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| | | published Tuesday, June 21, 2011 | 557 Views :: 1 Comments |
June 20, 2011
Editorials/Opinion The Seattle Times
THE Department of Energy and a primary contractor at the
Hanford nuclear reservation are not protecting worker health. The
failure threatens to compromise the cleanup mission and, ultimately,
protection of the public.
Such a blunt assessment did not come from a disgruntled employee or a
union rep, but the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, created in
the wake of past abuses.
Worker health and safety issues have been as persistent a problem at
Hanford as technical delays and shredded budgets. The safety board was
invented in the absence of state and federal oversight of worker safety.
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| | | published Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | 1112 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Annette Cary From the Tri-City Herald
RICHLAND — Failings in the safety culture at Hanford's vitrification plant are endangering the success of the $12.2 billion project, according to a strongly worded report from the national DefenseNuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The board's investigation found that Department of Energy and contractor project management behavior reinforce a plant subculture "that deters the timely reporting, acknowledgment and ultimate resolution of technical safety concerns," the report said.
Accusations included burying technical reports that raised safety issues, admonishing an expert whose testimony to the board differed from DOE policy and creating an atmosphere that discouraged workers from raising technical issues that could affect the plant's safe operation.
The report called for Energy Secretary Steven Chu to step in, sayingprompt, major improvements are needed and will only be successful and lasting if he champions them.
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| | | published Tuesday, June 07, 2011 | 537 Views :: 0 Comments |
Jun. 07, 2011
By Annette Cary From the Tri-City Herald
Deep geological disposal is the best alternative for the nation's waste classified as greater than class C low-level radioactive waste and similar nondefense waste, according to the Hanford Advisory Board.
The HAB board has joined several other agencies or groups in recommending Hanford be taken off a list of locations the Department of Energy is considering for disposal of the waste. The states of Washington and Oregon already have asked that Hanford be taken off DOE's list.
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| | | published Friday, May 20, 2011 | 1153 Views :: 0 Comments |
May 18, 2011
By the Oregonian Editorial Board
Plutonium was made in a reactor near the Columbia River, and it powered the nuclear bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. In weapons work that lasted through the 1980s and would involve several reactors, radioactive materials were spilled onto the ground and into trenches and, over time, into tanks rotting underground. The 586-square-mile southeast Washington site is already tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into a near-impossible cleanup -- the largest in the world -- and has little chance of being completed anytime before 2050. Now the Northwest has a new Hanford challenge.
The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees the cleanup, names Hanford as a candidate site for becoming the nation's radioactive dumping ground -- a permanent storage site not for spent nuclear fuel but for radioactive parts of decommissioned nuclear plants, mainly from Midwestern and Eastern states, as well as radioactive castoffs from medical and research processes nationwide.
This is a bad idea. It runs counter to everything that Oregon and Washington, Northwest tribes and health advocates have sought to achieve in taming a Hanford nuclear beast that menaces underground water, the Columbia River, and human and wildlife populations nearby. And the mission of our cleanup remains singular: Find the money and invent the technologies it will take to process and contain substances so radioactive they take thousands of years to lose potency.
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| | | published Thursday, May 19, 2011 | 945 Views :: 1 Comments |
May 18, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
PASCO — The states of Washington and Oregon teamed up Tuesday night to
tell the Department of Energy that bringing more radioactive waste to
Hanford would be a bad idea.
"It is inconceivable to us that U.S. DOE would spend billions of dollars
to try to clean up the environmental damage at Hanford, yet ignore that
work by proposing to dispose of additional highly radioactive wastes on
the site," said Ron Skinnarland of the Washington State Department of
Ecology, reading from a joint Washington and Oregon state letter to DOE.
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| | | published Thursday, May 05, 2011 | 861 Views :: 0 Comments |
April 30, 2011
By John Severance
From the Los Alamos Monitor
POJOAQUE - It was evident about halfway through the public comment
session Thursday night that not too many people were in favor of the
Department of Energy wanting to build a nuclear disposal facility in Los
Alamos or anywhere in New Mexico.
In fact, one New Mexico resident had another alternative.
"Build an above grade vault on the Mall at Washington, D.C. and mandate
that all waste be sent there," said Stuart Barger, who said he lives
downwind from Los Alamos. "Make sure to use trucks and ship it there
during a Congressional session."
The remarks drew laughs and applause from the majority of the crowd at
the Cities of Gold conference room, but this was still serious business
for all those in attendance.
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| | | published Tuesday, February 15, 2011 | 1977 Views :: 0 Comments |
Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
The Democratic administration's proposed fiscal 2012 budget released Monday would increase funding for the Hanford nuclear reservation.
However, while the budget for work at the tank farms and the vitrification plant under the Department of Energy Office of River Protection would increase, money for the Richland Operations Office would decrease. It is responsible for the rest of Hanford work.
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| | | published Monday, January 24, 2011 | 1475 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 22, 2011
From the Seattle Times
By Craig Welch
At the Hanford nuclear
reservation, the Department of Energy is building a plant to clean up 53
million gallons of radioactive waste. But after a quarter-century of
preparation — and cost estimates that have nearly tripled to $12.2
billion — builders still haven't resolved this project's most vexing
technical and safety issues.
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 2890 Views :: 5 Comments |
By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
January 29, 2010 8:02 a.m. EST
Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington (CNN) -- The federal government has set aside nearly $2 billion in stimulus funds to clean up Washington State's decommissioned Hanford nuclear site, once the center of the country's Cold War plutonium production.
That is more stimulus funding than some entire states have received, which has triggered a debate as to whether the money is being properly spent.
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