DOE Meets TPA Milestone in the 300 Area

DOE News ReleaseMedia Contact: Cameron Hardy, DOE For Immediate Release:
(509) 376-5365, Cameron.Hardy@rl.doe.gov July 13, 2010Five Waste Sites, One Burial Ground Completed Ahead of Deadline

RICHLAND, WASH. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) met a Tri-Party Agreement Milestone three months early when contractors completed remediation of five waste sites and one burial ground recently in the 300 Area of the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State.

The active remediation of these waste sites helps Hanford get rid of sources of contamination to area groundwater, which can migrate to the Columbia River.

NEW RICHLAND OPERATIONS MANAGER ANNOUNCED

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Media Contact: July 9, 2010 Colleen French, 509-539-0210
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today named Matthew S. McCormick Manager of the Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington State. In this role, he will continue the momentum of cleanup along the Columbia River, further implement the Department’s strategy for shrinking the footprint of active cleanup operations from 586 square miles to 10 square miles in ten years, oversee groundwater protection remedies that will stop the migration of contaminants into the Columbia River, and dispose of hazardous waste and facilities across the Hanford Site.

“Matt's extensive experience in nuclear project management will be critical in continuing the success of the cleanup along the Columbia River and across the Hanford Site. Matt’s strength is his breadth of project management experience – reducing risk at some of DOE’s highest-hazard facilities – combined with his drive to push for better and smarter approaches to complex cleanup challenges,” said Dr. Ines Triay, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management. “He has been a leader not only in helping shape and implement footprint reduction at the Hanford Site, but also in putting together the strategy and regulatory support for how to complete cleanup of the Central Plateau. He has worked alongside Dave Brockman for years at DOE’s Hanford and Rocky Flats sites, and is uniquely qualified to continue Richland’s momentum and successes.”

Sending more Hanford waste to Idaho would save cash

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer /Cary Annette/719 words/28 May 2010/Tri-City Herald/TRIC/B1/English/(c) 2010 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

Not shipping certain Hanford radioactive waste to Idaho for processing as earlier planned is costing the nation $25 million in increased costs, according to an audit by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General.
The Department of Energy questions that, saying that the long-term costs of dealing with that waste at Hanford will be reduced by at least $135 million because the project has been accelerated with federal economic stimulus money.
Similar long-term savings could be achieved by sending the waste to Idaho for processing, the audit countered.
At issue is transuranic waste — typically debris contaminated with plutonium — that temporarily was buried at Hanford when Congress ordered a national repository for transuranic waste created in 1970. The waste was buried in drums and boxes until the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico opened as a repository.
In February 2008, the Department of Energy announced a plan to ship as much as 8,500 cubic yards of transuranic waste from Hanford to the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Completion of 300 Area Waste Sites Meets TPA Milestone

RICHLAND, Wash. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) met a Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) milestone by completing cleanup work on 11 different waste sites at Hanford’s 300 Area just north of Richland, Wash.
Work on the waste sites began in 2002 and was completed in April by DOE’s River Corridor contractor, Washington Closure Hanford.
During that time, 426,000 tons of soil and debris were removed from the waste sites, with the most significant volumes coming from a waste site called the 618-7 Burial Ground. Volumes of waste in the group of waste sites ranged in size from 10 tons to 178,000 tons removed.
The TPA milestone required that cleanup work be completed before December 31, 2012 at these waste sites: 300-8, 300-18, 300-VTS, 600-47, 600-259, 618-2, 618-3, 618-5, 618-7, 618-8, and 618-13.
Of the 11 waste sites, six were surface sites with smaller volumes of waste, while five of the burial grounds had larger volumes and more significant hazards. One of the most hazardous and challenging burial grounds was 618-7, which held more than 800 barrels of hazardous materials, twenty large contaminated stainless steel tanks, 100 drums of zircaloy chips and extensive amounts of soil and debris containing lead contamination.
DOE’s former contractor, Bechtel Hanford Inc., began work on all but a few of the sites. The cleanup work was later transferred to Washington Closure Hanford when DOE selected the company to lead the River Corridor Closure Project in 2005.
“What we learned from the hazards of the early waste sites gave us a tremendous leg up on the tougher burial grounds,” said Dave Brockman, Manager of the Richland Operations Office. “Our contractors gained a great deal of knowledge about how to safely and efficiently work these hazardous burial grounds.”
John Darby, a project manager for Washington Closure who worked on several of the sites said that work at the 618-2 Burial Ground, “fundamentally changed the way we clean up waste sites at Hanford – from how we protect people to how we manage the site and unknown items we discover along the way. It totally changed our approach to remediation,” said Darby.
With the completion of the burial grounds, most of which were outside the 300 Area perimeter fence, work has shifted to waste sites inside the fence. Most of the remaining sites are associated with buildings that must be removed in order to reach the waste sites underneath.

Hanford Cleanup: The First 20 Years

This report was written and produced by the Oregon Department of Energy’s Nuclear Safety Division,
with the support of U.S. Department of Energy Grant #DE-FG06-RL14780.
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/docs/HanfordFirst20years.pdf

Community ready for talks on future of Hanford lands

Herald editorial staff; Sivula Chris444 words26 March 2010Tri-City HeraldTRICA8English(c) 2010 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

Community leaders are right to push for more say in Hanford’s future, and they need to keep up the pressure.
Planning for life after cleanup needs to be a partnership between the Tri-Cities and the Department of Energy.
In a recent letter to Ines Triay, DOE assistant secretary for environmental management, Tri-City political leaders and economic development officials turned up the heat.
Forging a common vision doesn’t seem out of reach, but the process could benefit from a greater sense of urgency.

Triay says Yucca decision won't delay Hanford cleanup; Murkowski differs

 Derek Sands, Elaine Hiruo /907 words/22 March 2010/Inside Energy/IE/13/ISSN: 1556-3928/English/(c) 2010 McGraw-Hill, Inc. /

The Obama administration's decision to terminate a long-planned nuclear-waste repository in Nevada will not disrupt the Energy Department's cleanup schedule at a highly contaminated Hanford Site in Washington state, a senior DOE official said last week, despite warnings from a prominent senator that delays will occur and states will file lawsuits in response."It is not slowing down the current work," Ines Triay, assistant secretary for environmental management, said at a hearing Wednesday. "We are talking about that decision not being on the critical path, not preventing the cleanup at Hanford to move forward. ... [Current] activities do not necessitate a decision for disposal, especially because we are going to be producing a very protective waste form." Waste from Hanford, a former nuclear weapons facility, was destined for the national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada until the administration decided to kill the project last year. Washington's attorney general, Rob McKenna, has expressed concern that the decision will mean delays at Hanford, one of the largest nuclear cleanup projects in the world.

DC's oversight of Hanford construction increases

By SHANNON DININNY /Associated Press Writer412 words/14 April 2010/8:24/Associated Press Newswires/APRS/English/(c) 2010. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Federal officials in Washington, D.C., are assuming a larger role overseeing construction of a massive plant to treat radioactive waste in south-central Washington.
The $12 billion vitrification plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation is among the largest industrial construction projects nationally, both in cost and sheer size. The plant is being built to convert highly radioactive waste into a safe form for permanent disposal.
The Energy Department has largely overseen plant construction from its Office of River Protection at Hanford. According to an internal Energy Department memo, dated March 31 and obtained by The Associated Press, a full-time staffer in Washington D.C. will oversee the project, thus ensuring someone in the nation's capitol is intricately involved with the high-profile project.
The move allows the project director at Hanford greater access to resources in the nation's capital, Energy Department spokeswoman Carrie Meyer said.
"The Department of Energy remains committed to ensuring that the Hanford waste treatment plant project is completed safely on time and on budget," she said.

DOE urged to establish 'Energy Parks' program so workers won't be furloughed

1136 words5 April 2010Inside EnergyIEISSN: 1556-3928English(c) 2010 McGraw-Hill, Inc.



An Energy Department initiative to allow developers to build wind farms, solar plants and other renewable-energy projects at remediated nuclear weapons sites has drawn keen interest from private industry and communities in the shadows of those defunct weapons plants.



Supporters say the so-called Energy Parks initiative will provide new employment opportunities to DOE cleanup workers who would otherwise work themselves out of their jobs when the sites where they work are cleaned up. But some observers fear that DOE will not get the initiative up and running before it spends all of the $6 billion in economic stimulus that it received for environmental cleanup, and that thousands of workers would have to be furloughed as a result.



"A year and a half from now, the cliff arrives," said Lawrence Papay, an energy consultant who sits on DOE's Environmental Management Advisory Board. "EM is going to be left holding the bag of a lot of people who can be employed and don't have prospects moving forward. Even if you were to act today, I am afraid you would not have enough time."



DOE's Environmental Management Office would like to draw on resources from across the department to help with Energy Parks, including tapping into its offices of energy efficiency and renewable energy, science and fossil energy. But to date, EM has not put a formal structure in place to do that.



At a meeting in Washington last week, some members of the EM advisory board said that without a formal structure in place, there could be massive job losses at some of the cleanup sites as the economic stimulus money runs out. The agency must have that money out the door by September 2011, and DOE expects to have completed cleanup on vast stretches of its land by that time.



James Antizzo, the senior coordinator of the Energy Parks initiative, said at the meeting that "conceptually, there is a lot of buy in" for the effort. But Antizzo acknowledged that the initiative "has not been blessed by [senior DOE] management, per se."



Ines Triay, DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, said at the meeting that the department would soon form a task force to coordinate Energy Parks-related work across various DOE offices.



Despite the lack of a formal plan from DOE, interest has been strong in the Energy Parks initiative. The Mid-Columbia Energy Initiative, put together by a local-government-run development group, is working on acquiring up to 60 square miles of cleaned-up land at the Hanford Site in Washington state for use in future energy projects, according to Antizzo. Other projects are also in the works at the Pantex site in Texas, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Mound in southern Ohio, he said.



EM received $6 billion in last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and a big fraction of the funds are going towards reducing the size of the so-called "cleanup footprint," or the amount of land DOE is responsible for cleaning up.



Using the stimulus funds, EM plans to reduce its overall footprint by some 450 square miles, or by 50% of its current size, by September 2011.



So far, EM has spent $1.5 billion of its $6 billion in stimulus funds, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu said last month that the cleanup program has created 14,000 jobs. Those jobs could dry up with the end of Recovery Act spending.



DOE contractors have used subcontractors for much of the work, and maintaining long-term jobs at the sites in the wake of the Recovery Act has emerged as a primary concern of local community groups. The Energy Communities Alliance, which represents communities near DOE sites, has been a strong advocate of Energy Parks.



Several ECA local-government members have drafted a one-page legislative proposal legislation that would formally establish the Energy Parks program. Seth Kirshenberg, ECA's executive director, said members of his group are working with senators and members of Congress to get the bill introduced.



The current initiative would leave it up to local communities to push for Energy Parks, but the draft legislation from ECA members would establish a formal program at DOE to promote the use of former defense nuclear facilities, such as Hanford and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.



It is unclear whether DOE would support legislation. In remarks to the board, Merle Sykes, the office's chief of business operations, said that the administration would consider supporting legislation.



"I have actually looked at the legislation. We'll see if there is not a way we can figure out how the administration can support that in a more active way," Sykes said. According to Triay, the purpose of the program is simply to have DOE act as a facilitator for communities hoping to bring in energy projects.



Even after a task force is in place, DOE still faces challenges, according to Antizzo. It must perform an audit of available resources, develop site plans, and determine a strategy for performing the environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act.



While the Energy Parks Initiative is being thrashed out within the department, some of the sites have been pursuing similar efforts on their own for years, such as land transfers and leasing at the Oak Ridge Site, according to Antizzo.



"I think the idea with the Energy Parks Initiative is to kind of make it a little more strategic, so that you have in addition to the opportunities that come up as an individual opportunity, how do we then take the opportunities and link them to a national strategy," he said.



Still, some local advocacy groups warned that DOE must act in a transparent manner if it pursues its initiative to build renewable-energy projects on remidiated nuclear weapons sites. Tom Carpenter, the executive director of Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group near the Hanford Site, said that his major concern was the lack of transparency in the Energy Parks process.



"I understand the jobs issue," Carpenter said. "But it needs to be done in an open and transparent process with buy in from the regional stakeholders, and not just make it happen in the dark, behind the scenes and hope to get away with it."



Carpenter added that local stakeholders have a number of tools at their disposal, including lawsuits, to delay or derail Energy Parks projects that are not done openly.



"I don't think the Department of Energy has any business whatsoever deciding to use a part of that site, whose future has been undetermined, and just start leasing or selling land off of it without wide agreement," he said. "They can expect resistance." — Derek Sands
Document IE00000020100419e6450000e

Hanford landfill keeps growing

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer ary Annette11 February 2010Tri-City HeraldTRIC(c) 2010 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

Hanford’s super-sized landfill is getting two new “super cells.”
An excavator started digging up large shovelfuls of dirt Wednesday for the latest expansion of the Hanford landfill for low-level radioactive waste.
With the infusion of nearly $2 billion in economic stimulus money to speed up environmental cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility is being filled faster than ever. The contents of about 400 containers holding an average of 20 tons of waste apiece are added to the site each day.
“ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) funds are actually doing real work at Hanford,” said Dave Einan, an engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency, a Hanford regulator. “We are going to need the capacity.”

TradeWind Services, a Richland company founded in 2005, was awarded a subcontract worth up to $30 million for the latest expansion. It will increase landfill capacity by 50 percent to 16.4 million tons.

The contract includes excavating and lining super cell 10, on which digging began Wednesday, and finishing super cell 9, which already has been excavated. They’re called super cells because each is twice the size of the first eight disposal areas.

Each super cell will be 70 feet deep and measure 1,000-feet-by-500-feet, making the bulldozers and excavators working there look like inches-long Matchbox toys.

Washington Closure Hanford, which operates the landfill, expects to receive about $100 million in federal economic stimulus money for expansion of the landfill and other improvements so it can accept and handle increased daily volumes of waste.

Board: Lung disease risk too high at Hanford

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer Cary Annette/841 words/5 February 2010Tri-City Herald(c) 2010 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

The Hanford Advisory Board is questioning whether the Department of Energy is doing enough to protect Hanford workers from an incurable lung disease caused by exposure to beryllium.

DOE officials in Washington, D.C., are about to launch a review of the Hanford beryllium protection program because of the concerns of some workers.

But by the time that review is finished, three more cases of chronic beryllium disease could be diagnosed if current trends continue, said board member Mike Korenko at a meeting Thursday of the advisory board in Kennewick.

“How can you not look at that data and have adrenaline flowing?” he asked Doug Shoop, deputy manager of the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office.

Hanford workers new cancer package OK’d,

TriCity Herald (WA), 12/17/09
WASHINGTON — The federal secretary of Health and Human Services has agreed to expand automatic compensation of $150,000 to more Hanford workers who may have developed cancer because of exposure to radiation.
If Congress does not object, the decision by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius takes effect Jan. 10. The action was recommended in October by a federal advisory board.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, will review 340 pending claims of former Hanford workers, some filed by their survivors. The claims are for workers who had cancers covered under the automatic compensation program and who worked at Hanford during the years the new expanded rules would cover.
Those pending claims are in addition to hundreds of past claims that have been denied but would be reviewed by the Department of Labor to see if they now qualify for compensation under the eased rules. The new rules also could help some middle-aged Hanford workers and recent retirees who yet may develop cancer.

Keep Hanford land options open, Doc says

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer /Cary Annette/483 words/11 December 2009/Tri-City Herald/TRIC/D1/English/(c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

The federal government needs to keep all options open and prevent land from being locked up as cleanup is completed on parts of the Hanford nuclear reservation, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said Thursday.
He discussed the future and funding issues for Hanford and other Department of Energy sites in Washington, D.C., as the keynote speaker at the semi-annual meeting of the Energy Facilities Contractor Group.
DOE expects to have most of the cleanup along the Columbia River at Hanford completed by 2015, shrinking the contaminated portion of the nuclear reservation from 586 square miles to about 75 square miles at its center. In addition, much of $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money is being used to speed up cleanup and free up areas for other uses, such as a clean energy park to research and produce energy.
A top priority should be ensuring that local communities have a meaningful leadership role in determining their future with these lands, he said.
“It is critical that we remember the unique features of each site and each community,” he said.
Earlier this year he worked to get Hanford deleted from a bill that would have designated Hanford as a National Environmental Research Park, believing a designation that covered the entire site could have unintended consequences and reduce flexibility in making long-range land use plans.
Plans also are being made at Hanford’s historic B Reactor, where supporters have worked for years to have it preserved as a museum.

Hanford contract award for lab protested

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer /Cary Annette/390 words/10 December 2009/Tri-City Herald/TRIC/B6/
English/(c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.
A protest has been lodged in the Department of Energy’s $48.6 million award to Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International to operate Hanford’s 222-S Laboratory.
The Department of Energy will have 35 days to address the protest, which was filed with the agency’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center rather than the Government Accountability Office. The protest was filed Nov. 27.
Four bids were received for the small business contract, which DOE awarded Nov. 20. DOE declined to say who bid on the project or which bidder filed the protest.

Seattle crowd opposes Hanford cleanup delays

By JOHN STANG / SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF/1230 words/16 November 2009/SeattlePI.com/SEPI/
English/© 2009 Hearst Communications Inc., Hearst Newspapers Division. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.

A tentative agreement to stretch out the timetable to convert the Hanford nuclear reservation's worst radioactive wastes into more benign glass drew little support at a Seattle meeting last Thursday.
If adopted, the agreement would delay start-up of a massive waste- glassification complex from 2011 to 2019. And completion of the glassification would shift from 2028 to 2047.
The agreement -- actually a negotiated settlement to a state lawsuit against the federal Department of Energy -- also gives a federal judge the power to enforce the new schedule if the feds balk at it in the future.
The feds and state have been holding public hearings on the proposed agreement around Washington. In a few weeks, the state and feds will use the public feedback to figure out if the tentative agreement should be changed. About 110 people showed up at a Thursday hearing at the Quality Inn near the Seattle Center. Most, if not all, opposed the proposed delays.

Board says to empty tanks more quickly

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer /Cary Annette/893 words/9 November 2009/Tri-City Herald/TRIC/B1
\English\c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

More aggressive deadlines for emptying radioactive waste from leakprone underground tanks should be included in a proposed settlement agreement, the Hanford Advisory Board says.
That was one of several recommendations the board made last week concerning a proposed agreement between the Department of Energy and the state of Washington that would end a lawsuit brought by the state.
The board continues its opposition to further consideration of bulk vitrification for supplemental treatment of low activity radioactive waste. It also continues to press for the start of treatment of low activity waste at the main vitrification plant under construction, the Waste Treatment Plant, before the entire plant is ready to operate.
In addition the board earlier had advised that a cost and schedule outlook for remaining environmental cleanup work be completed before the state agreed to changes in legal deadlines. But when members were asked if that was a deal breaker for them, they said no.

Work on largest vit plant building continues

Work has begun on the interior fittings of the Hanford vitrification plant’s largest building as it continues to rise. The Pretreatment Facility, which will stand 120 feet high, is now at 77 feet high in places and continues to rise steadily as concrete and steel are installed.
The facility will be used to separate radioactive waste now held in underground tanks into high level and low activity waste streams for separate treatment for final disposal. It’s the largest building planned on the vit plant’s 65-acre campus and measures 540 feet long and 215 feet wide.
“Up until now, we’ve primarily concentrated on the exterior structural framework of the facility,” said Leon Lamm, area project manager for the Pretreatment Facility, in a statement. “Now we are integrating efforts to install commodities inside the building.”

Moratorium on waste imports has questions

Moratorium on waste imports has questions
Annette Cary;Herald staff writer
30 October 2009
Tri-City Herald
English
(c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

Concerns were raised about whether the state can make the federal government stick to its moratorium on importing certain radioactive wastes to the Hanford nuclear reservation at a public hearing Thursday night in Richland.
About 40 people attended the hearing on a proposed settlement agreement reached by the state of Washington and the Department of Energy to resolve a lawsuit brought by the state against DOE almost a year ago. The state sued after it became clear DOE could not meet legal deadlines in the Tri-Party Agreement to empty leak-prone underground tanks of radioactive waste and treat the waste.
The proposed settlement agreement would extend deadlines to dates DOE and the state say are realistic. And in one concession for doing that, the state won a commitment from DOE not to import several types of waste to Hanford until the vitrification plant is fully operational to treat the waste. That’s scheduled for 2022.
While new environmental cleanup deadlines could be enforced either by a federal court order under a consent decree or through the Tri-Party Agreement, neither would cover the moratorium on importing waste to Hanford.
The Department of Justice has given its word in a letter to the state that wastes DOE already had decided to send to Hanford would not be sent at least while the moratorium is in effect. That includes low-level radioactive waste, some of it mixed with hazardous chemicals, that was to be buried in Hanford landfills. It also includes transuranic waste, typically waste contaminated with plutonium, and transuranic waste mixed with hazardous chemicals that were to be stored at Hanford.

More Hanford workers could be compensated

More Hanford workers could be compensated
Annette Cary;Herald staff writer
29 October 2009
Tri-City Herald
(c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.
Less than 10 percent of former Hanford construction workers who likely would qualify for compensation for illnesses have applied to a federal program, said a Building Trades National Medical Screening Program official.
Representatives of the program held a meeting in Pasco on Wednesday night to discuss the screening and a Department of Labor program that provides compensation for Hanford workers who developed illnesses because of exposure to radiation or hazardous chemicals at the nuclear reservation. Nearly 100 attended.
As many as 25,000 former Hanford building trades workers may have developed illnesses covered by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, said Knut Ringen, principal investigator for the building trades screening program. But he estimated that less than 10 percent of those have applied.
The compensation program pays $150,000 in compensation for cancers likely caused by radiation exposure and up to $250,000 for wage loss and impairment caused by exposure to toxic substances, which could include radiation, chemicals, solvents, acids and metals. Medical expenses are covered, and if workers have died, their survivors may be eligible for compensation.