Hanford
troubles grow while feds dawdle
By Dave
Mazza, The
Portland Alliance
June 2002
Most Portlanders
see the Columbia River as a source of
natural
beauty, recreation, hydroelectric power and even
food.
They don't see the glistening waters as a highway that
could
deliver over 54 million gallons of radioactive waste
to the
shores of the Rose City. Too many Portlanders are
unaware
that 215 miles upstream is the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation,
560 square miles of eastern Washington desert
that is
home to the largest atomic stew in the nation.
That's
too bad, according to activists like Paige Knight,
who say
that federal regulators responsible for cleaning up
the waste
at Hanford are more concerned with playing
politics
and gutting environmental regulations than coming
up with
a viable way to keep the stuff safely stored.
"The
Department of Energy (DOE) has come up with a 'new
plan'
for the cleanup," states Paige, president of the
nonprofit
group Hanford Watch. "But will this new plan help
us move
forward or simply leave these problems for a new
generation?"
The question
is not a new one. Since the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation
first starting producing weapons-grade plutonium
in 1944
the question of how to handle the waste has been
raised.
Between 1944 and the late 1980s Hanford operated
several
nuclear reactors along the Columbia River. The
river's
waters were pumped through the reactors, cooling
radioactive
fuel rods, before being returned back to the
river.
Spent rods were dissolved in nitric acid to recover
any remaining
plutonium. The process combined radioactive
materials
with highly hazardous chemicals, creating enormous
amounts
of very "hot" waste. Since production of
weapons-grade
plutonium ceased at Hanford, the facility's
only mission
is to clean up this deadly mess.
They have
been trying to do so since 1989. That was the year
DOE entered
into the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) with the US
Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and the Washington
State
Department of Ecology. Hanford is owned by the federal
government
and managed by the DOE, but is subject to federal
and state
environmental laws and the responsible regulatory
agencies.
This legal contract governing the cleanup that
the three
agencies signed contains legally enforceable
"milestones"
or deadlines for completing certain tasks. But
the TPA
is a "living document" and milestones have been
moved
more than once as the agreement has been renegotiated
and amended.
Time, however, is running out.
Most of
the 54 million gallons of waste are stored in 177
underground
tanks the size of three-story buildings, buried
about
12 miles from the Columbia River. Seventy of those
tanks
have been leaking for the past several years, sending
an estimated
one million gallons of waste into the
surrounding
soil. Some of the waste has reached groundwater
that eventually
flows into the Columbia. Estimates of the
time it
will take for waste to reach the Columbia vary
widely
- from as little as seven years to several
generations.
There are no estimates on how badly the river
could
be damaged should that occur.
There
is also no plan for making sure that doesn't happen,
either.
DOE has not developed a plan for intercepting the
waste.
Their response has been to transfer waste from the
leaking
single shell tanks to newer double shell tanks. But
the 28
double shell tanks do not have the capacity to handle
all the
waste from the leaking tanks. The double shell
tanks,
as Knight points out, are aging as well. X-rays of
the tanks
have shown cracks in the "analus," the filler
between
the walls. In time, these tanks will also begin
leaking.
The DOE's
long-term strategy is combining the waste with
molten
glass - vitrification. The glass logs produced by
this process
would be stored in vaults in Hanford's central
area.
Although DOE is talking about beginning tank closures
in 2003-4,
the vitrification plant will not be constructed
and in
production until 2011. DOE expects that by 2018 it
will have
vitrified 10 percent of the storage tank waste.
The other
area of urgent concern is Hanford's "K Basins."
Located
only a quarter mile from the river, the basins are
enormous
indoor pools used to hold 2,300 tons of corroded,
highly
radioactive fuel rods underwater. The basins have
leaked
in the past and are extremely susceptible to rupture
by earthquake.
Such a rupture could spill radioactive water
into the
Columbia. Or it could expose the fuel to the air,
causing
it to burn and spread radioactive particles through
surrounding
atmosphere. The DOE plan calls for drying and
storing
the spent fuel in canisters that will be buried in
underground
vaults on the reservation. The TPA calls for the
west basin
to be emptied by Dec. 2002 and the east basin by
July 2004.
Some spent rods have already been moved.
The new
administration has publicly expressed a sense of
urgency
around the cleanup. The DOE's Jessie Roberson,
Assistant
Secretary of the Office of Environmental
Management
has conducted a "top-to-bottom review" of how the
cleanup
is progressing and what needs to be done to get back
on track.
Knight believes the review did produce some good
things,
like identifying bad contracting practices and poor
management.
But she is concerned about some of the
conclusions
Roberson and others at DOE are drawing from the
review.
Roberson
seems to see the National Environmental Protection
Act (NEPA)
as a problem. NEPA requires agencies to assess
the environmental
impact of a project, including taking
input
from the public. NEPA has long been a target of the
resource
extraction industries and those in the public
sector
who support them. Roberson, Knight states, feels NEPA
is taking
up too much time with public hearings and public
input
while reducing government control over the cleanup.
Roberson
has also made noises about another environmental
law being
an impediment to cleanup: the Resource
Conservation
and Reclamation Act (RCRA), the US' basic
hazardous
waste law. RCRA classifies hazardous waste and
outlines
procedures for its removal. Roberson has stated
that RCRA,
like NEPA, needs to be streamlined to meet the
current
crisis.
Setting
aside the role these two federal laws have played in
environmental
protection, Knight sees Roberson's focus on
NEPA and
RCRA troubling since neither can be altered except
through
Congressional action, a lengthy process at best
that doesn't
address the more pressing needs at Hanford.
These
aren't the only troubling comments coming from
Roberson.
With the vitrification plant nowhere near
completion
and more tanks leaking everyday, Roberson is
talking
about removing more waste from the tanks and using a
method
called "grouting" to prepare the waste for storage.
Grouting
involves mixing the waste with cement and then
applying
it to the insides of underground vaults. This is
not the
first time grouting has been proposed. Knight points
out that
the idea was floated in 1992. But Hanford's waste
is so
"hot" the grout wouldn't set.
Perhaps
the most disturbing influence Roberson is bringing
to the
issue is her reorganizing of how all nuclear
reservations
will be funded in the future.
"In
the past, the advisory boards for the reservations had
developed
into a close network," Knight, an advisory board
member
for Hanford, states. "The other reservations
recognized
that Hanford had the largest amount of waste to
deal with
and therefore warranted receiving the most funds.
There
had even been advocating for multi-year funding for
projects.
Roberson has changed that."
Under
Roberson's plan, all the reservations will be
underfunded,
creating what Knight calls an $800 million
"slush
fund." Roberson wants all the reservations to compete
for those
funds to bring reservations up to legal
requirements
and to implement projects. Hanford had
previously
been promised $430 million for cleanup, but
Roberson's
new system has fueled competition between the
reservations,
jeopardizing the likelihood Hanford will
receive
adequate funding. Knight characterizes the idea as a
way for
DOE to "divide and rule" the advisory boards.
Meanwhile
the clock continues to run. DOE's plan, which can
best be
described as composed of "big strokes," is supposed
to be
completed by Aug. 1. A public meeting of DOE officials
and the
advisory board is scheduled for June 4 to discuss
the budget.
Knight
doesn't believe DOE will have the budget in time for
the meeting,
but hopes the time can be spent getting DOE to
respond
to a series of troubling questions about the
cleanup,
such as why is Roberson talking about closing
tanks
when there is no vitrification taking place or any
criteria
established for closing the tank farms? Knight
would
also like the meeting to address the solid waste
impact
standards DOE recently finalized - only four years
behind
schedule - which Knight and others see as a green
light
for shipping large amounts of waste to Hanford.
An additional
round of meetings is scheduled for July. DOE
wants
to hold two meetings in Oregon - one in Portland or
Hood River
and one in LaGrande (expected to be a major
transport
center). Meetings are also being scheduled for
Seattle
and Richland. Knight thinks there should be meetings
in La
Grande, Hood River and Portland.
The June
and July meetings will be opportunities for the
public
to provide input, too. Key questions that need to be
raised
by citizens include Roberson's "competitive
budgeting"
that Knight calls "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
The public
also needs to ask for the plan's holes to be
filled
before being adopted. Then there's the issue of
turning
Hanford into a major storage area for waste from
around
the nation.
For Paige
Knight, it all boils down to the question she
keeps
asking DOE: "Are we solving the problem or leaving it
for future
generations?
Unless
Oregonians and other citizens begin asking the same
questions,
it seems unlikely we'll receive more than a quick
fix designed
to make the Bush administration appear to have
taken
action while laying the groundwork for future attacks
on environmental
laws like NEPA and RCRA that the
administration
and its resource extraction industry friends
would
love to gut.
Note:
Calls were placed to Ms. Jessie Roberson at the DOE
regarding
proposed plans for cleanup at Hanford Nuclear
Reservation,
however, there was no response by the time this
issue
went to press.
-Dave
Mazza is editor of The Portland Alliance.