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Our Waste Experts |
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Past and Present |
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 The Department of Energy (DOE) has produced radioactive materials for nuclear bombs; designed, built, and tested nuclear weapons; and developed reactor and other technologies with little concern for the environmental harm those activities cause. The inevitable result is that all DOE sites are polluted. Nevertheless, DOE remains far more interested in protecting its pollution-causing activities than in correcting the harm they have already done.
DOE is not meeting its legal and ethical responsibility to clean up the legacy of more than 60 years of radioactive and toxic contamination. Instead, DOE is promoting nuclear activities that will create additional pollution and threaten the health of future generations. Currently, water near some DOE facilities, such as Paducah, KY, and Pantex, TX, remains unfit to drink. Some of the nation’s major water sources, including the Columbia River, Snake River Aquifer, and Ogallala Aquifer, are threatened.
After declaring the Yucca Mountain project dead, the Obama Administration called for a "Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future" to determine what should be done with US high level nuclear waste. The Blue Ribbon Commission has issued its draft report. A final report will be issued in January |
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| | | published Monday, December 12, 2011 | 1296 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article discusses the Hanford, WA nuclear waste treatment plant that ANA has long been concerned about. The article examines retaliation against Walt Tamosaitis, a whistleblower who ANA recognized at our 2011 DC Days awards reception. The piece also quotes ANA member, Tom Carpenter, a long-time Hanford watchdog.
December 11, 2011
By Shannon Dininny
From the Associated Press
The federal government says a one-of-a-kind plant that will convert radioactive waste into a stable and storable substance that resembles glass will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and may take longer to build, adding to a string of delays and skyrocketing price tag for the project.
In addition, several workers at southeast Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation have raised concerns about the safety of the plant's design — and complained they've been retaliated against for voicing their issues.
The turmoil has some in the Pacific Northwest uneasy about the plant's long-term viability and fearful that a frustrated Congress could balk at paying more money for a project long considered the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated site.
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| | | published Monday, December 05, 2011 | 1629 Views :: 2 Comments |
December 1, 2011
PRESS STATEMENT
Contact:Tom Carpenter, 206-419-5829, tomc@hanfordchallenge.org
Seattle, WA: Hanford Challenge today sharply criticized a report from a team of contractorselected experts that it says downplayed the seriousness of safety culture problems at the Hanford nuclear site.
“The report is a veiled attack on safety-culture oversight. It failed to acknowledge some of the most explicit indicators of the vit plant’s flawed safety culture. There was no mention of disclosures from three important safety experts on the Waste Treatment Plant who have gone public and filed concerns about suppression of technical and safety issues and putting schedule and cost before safety,” said Tom Carpenter, Executive Director of Hanford Challenge. Carpenter noted that this includes the Manager of Nuclear and Environmental Safety, DOE’s top scientist on the project, and the former Manager for Research and Technology.
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| | | published Monday, November 28, 2011 | 909 Views :: 0 Comments |
This piece quotes long-time ANA member Don Hancock as he tries to explain some of the issues involved with federally funding nuclear waste cleanup.
Nov. 25, 2011
From The Republic
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Los Alamos National Laboratory is asking the state of New Mexico for more time to meet some mandated cleanup milestones as it faces shifting priorities and uncertainty about its environmental cleanup budget.
The northern New Mexico lab would be able to speed up the shipment of radioactive waste from lab property to a permanent disposal site if allowed to shift resources to higher priority work, George Rael, head of environmental management for the federal government's Los Alamos Site Office told the Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/v5Ystc ).
The changes in lab cleanup priorities come amid discussion among the state, the lab and members of the public regarding the lab's 2005 agreement on environmental cleanup milestones.
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| | | published Tuesday, November 22, 2011 | 1920 Views :: 1 Comments |
Region’s Leading Hanford Cleanup Watchdog Group Will Ask for Federal Court to Order Action to Empty Leaky High-Level Nuclear Waste Tanks to Prevent Safety and Environmental Disaster
For Immediate Release Nov. 21, 2011 Contact: Gerry Pollet, JD; Executive Director (206)382-1014 / cell: (206)819-9015 The US Department of Energy (USDOE) informed Washington State today that it is not able to meet the court approved schedule it agreed to in October, 2010 for building the massive plant to turn liquid High-Level Nuclear Waste in leaky tanks at Hanford into a glass, referred to as the Vitrification Plant. Heart of America Northwest, the region’s leading Hanford Clean-Up watchdog group had objected to the highly publicized court settlement in 2010 between the USDOE and State, under which the USDOE was allowed to take an extra 22 years – to the year 2040 - to empty massive leaky, decades old, Single Shell Tanks of High Level Nuclear Waste in exchange for what USDOE and Washington State said would be a court enforceable schedule to build the Vitrification Plant.
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| | | published Sunday, November 13, 2011 | 529 Views :: 0 Comments |
This is part of a longer, unfolding story of safety investigations and whisleblower retaliation at the Hanford waste treatment plant (WTP). Last year, ANA recognized the first WTP whistleblower Walter Tamosaitis with an award at DC Days.
Nov. 13, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
A second official at the Hanford vitrification plant has filed a federal complaint, claiming she was discriminated against for being a whistleblower on issues related to safe nuclear operations of the plant.
Donna Busche, manager of environmental and nuclear safety at the plant, filed the complaint against URS Corp. and Bechtel National with the Department of Labor.
Bechtel holds the Department of Energy contract to build the $12.2 billion plant to treat high-level radioactive waste for disposal starting in 2019. URS, which employs Busche, is Bechtel's prime subcontractor.
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| | | published Friday, November 11, 2011 | 504 Views :: 0 Comments |
Nov. 11, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
Hanford official Joe Franco has been named to lead the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for the Department of Energy.
Franco, the DOE assistant manager for the Hanford river corridor, will become manager for the DOE Carlsbad Field Office.
The office oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, the nation's repository for transuranic waste generated during the research and production of nuclear weapons. It's where Hanford's transuranic waste, typically debris contaminated with plutonium, is sent for disposal in rooms mined out of an ancient salt formation 2,150 feet below ground.
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| | | published Wednesday, November 09, 2011 | 906 Views :: 0 Comments |
This article, which exposes the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's inability to meet it's performance milestones - and new strategy of simply doing away with performance metrics - features quotes and research from ANA's member group the Southwest Research and Information Center.
Oct 11, 2011
By John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
Cutting the federal budget seems all the rage in political circles these days.
The problem, as is becoming increasingly obvious, is that all that money is currently going to someone. Those people very much seem to want to continue to receive it or, if possible, get more.
As an example, consider the tug of war over money the Department of Energy is spending in southeastern New Mexico to dispose of its backlog of radioactive waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad.
Congressional budget cutters have proposed modest spending reductions. The project’s defenders have gone into hyperdrive.
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| | | published Tuesday, November 08, 2011 | 804 Views :: 2 Comments |
The following piece highlights the Department of Energy's habit of under-budgeting nuclear cleanup projects and features ANA member Gerald Pollet.
Nov. 6, 2011
By Annette Cary
From Tri-City Herald
Do not expect that the $115 billion estimated to be needed to complete environmental cleanup work at Hanford will be adequate to finish the job, according to the Hanford Advisory Board.
The board sent a letter to the Department of Energy and its regulators Friday saying that the estimate does not include cleanup work the board expects may be needed and also does not include fully developed cost estimates for some work.
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| | | published Thursday, November 03, 2011 | 1160 Views :: 0 Comments |
ANA thanks the Santa Fe Reporter for their excellent feature article on toxic waste coming from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The following article quotes several ANA members and asks "Why are we expanding weapons production and cutting corners on environmental protection?"
Nov. 2, 2011
By Wren Abbott
From the Santa Fe Reporter  In the summer of 2010, an excavator lifted a 1940s-era radiation protection suit from a pit in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 21. With it came two pickup trucks of the same vintage—one of which may have been involved in the famous Trinity nuclear test near White Sands—and a 30-foot-tall chemical mixing tank.
The successful excavation of Material Disposal Area B, the lab’s oldest waste site, disproved a commonly held belief: that comprehensive cleanup of radioactive waste at the lab was cost-prohibitive, if not impossible. The project cleared a 200,000 square foot area and removed 750,000 cubic feet of toxic waste that had lain dormant since World War II. It cost $110 million—a modest sum for a facility with an approximately $2 billion budget.
Unfortunately, Area B is one of 24 waste sites at LANL, which in 1944 started burying everything from uranium chips to contaminated dump trucks in unlined pits. More than half of the lab’s estimated 17 million cubic feet of remaining waste lies in Area G—the only disposal site where LANL continues to dump, and one it seeks to expand. Though Area G’s fate has been bandied about for decades, it has now reached a critical turning point.
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| | | published Thursday, September 29, 2011 | 2109 Views :: 0 Comments |
For Immediate Release Thursday, September 29, 2011 Contact:
Courtney Hanson What: Georgia WAND will host a press conference exposing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) failure to stand behind their agreement to implement environmental testing and monitoring in Georgia, specifically in rural, poor counties near Savannah River Site (SRS). A US nuclear weapons site, known by local residents as ‘the bomb plant’, SRS is currently tasked with Cold War legacy waste management, waste clean-up after reprocessing, plutonium disposition, and tritium production for nuclear weapons.
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Resources |
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GTCC Resources |
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The Department of Energy is seeking comments to determine the scope of the planned Environmental Impact Statement dealing with the "Disposal of Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) Low-Level Radioactive Waste."
Watch this space and this page for resources helpful in composing your own comments.
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