News -- April 18, 1999

Committee says FFTF decision can't be put off any longer
Tri-City Herald – April 10, 1999
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson should not let the Fast Flux Test Facility linger in standby, eating up tax dollars, a committee has advised. That could mean doing a less than full environmental impact statement, which would take two years.

The Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee sent a letter dated Wednesday to Richardson, with its advice on the future of FFTF, an experimental reactor built north of Richland in the 1970s as part of the nation's breeder-reactor program. A subcommittee pointed out "there is some strong public opposition to FFTF restart." Although the restart has been popular in the Mid-Columbia, environmentalists and some lawmakers want Hanford to stick to cleanup work. (more)

Hanford's FFTF to get long-awaited decision
The Spokesman-Review (AP) – April 5, 1999
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has said he will decide in April whether to shut down the Fast Flux Test Facility or order an environmental review, which would be used in deciding if the reactor should be restarted for a new task. He also could decide to keep FFTF on standby indefinitely, at a cost of roughly $40 million annually.

One mission being considered for the reactor is producing medical isotopes, but other missions would also be required to make running the reactor financially feasible. All missions would generate more nuclear waste.

Three members of the Northwest congressional delegation -- U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and U.S. Reps. Brian Baird and Adam Smith, both D-Wash -- are urging Richardson to end the standby and shut down FFTF for good. They raise concerns about the possibility of future defense missions that could add nuclear waste at the already heavily contaminated site. ``This issue has dragged on far too long,'' the lawmakers wrote to Richardson last week. ``I think there should be laser-like focus on cleanup rather than taking on more problems,'' Wyden says. (more)

DOE letter airs concerns on K Basins
Tri-City Herald -- April 8, 1999
A high-ranking Department of Energy official voiced qualms about whether Hanford's K Basins project is on track in a recent letter. James Owendoff, DOE's acting assistant secretary for environmental management, sent a March 29 letter to California-based Fluor Daniel Inc. president James Stein over concerns on how Fluor Daniel Hanford and subcontractor DE&S Hanford are managing the spent fuel project. Owendoff's letter said: "It is critical that the best personnel be brought to bear ... to achieve a successful outcome. We do not believe that this has yet been achieved or that a satisfactory team is currently in place."

Fluor and DE&S Hanford - usually called Duke - are supposed to move 2,300 tons of corroding spent nuclear fuel from the swimming pool like K Basins near the Columbia River to a safer underground vault in central Hanford. Movement is supposed to begin November 2000 and finish in 2003. The K Basins project has been plagued with budget increases and delays. In late 1996, the project had a $814 million price tag with a 2001 completion date. Now, the expanded project has a $1.59 billion cost estimate, a 2003 movement completion date, and a 2005 deadline to remove radioactive sludges from the basins. (more)

Schedule Progress for the Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel Project
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board – March 25, 1999
On September 11, 1998, the Board transmitted a list of near-term schedule milestones for use in monitoring the project's performance in meeting schedule objectives. [These would be DNFSB milestones, not Tri-Party Agreement milestones.] The project completed approximately 60 percent of these milestones early or on time, as discussed in more detail in the enclosed issue report. However, difficulties in resolving technical issues and managing procurement activities continue to result in missed or delayed milestones. Continued schedule delays and management changes raise doubt as to whether timely completion of the SNFP can be ensured. (more)

Hanford Tank Waste Project -- Schedule, Cost, and Management Issues
General Accounting Office – October 8, 1998
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Energy's (DOE) revised contracting approach for its Hanford Tank Waste Project, focusing on: (1) how DOE's current approach has changed from its original privatization strategy; (2) how this change has affected the project's schedule, cost, and estimated savings over conventional DOE approaches; (3) what risks DOE is now assuming with this change in approach; and (4) what steps DOE is taking to carry out its project oversight responsibilities. DOE contracted with BNFL, Inc. to treat about 10 percent of Hanford's tank waste. (more)

Ex-DOE Hanford chief Lawrence returning
Tri-City Herald – April 6, 1999
Mike Lawrence, a former Department of Energy Hanford manager, is returning to the site as the head of BNFL Inc.'s tank waste glassification efforts. Lawrence has 30 years of experience in nuclear fields, including 21 years with DOE. That includes being DOE's Hanford manager from 1984 to 1990. BNFL is supposed to build and begin operating plants to convert radioactive tank wastes into glass by 2007. (more)

Risk of nuclear waste explosion at Hanford rising
Environment News Service -- April 8, 1999
Breakdown products in enclosed nuclear waste storage tanks may build up pressure and explode warns a new study by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Notre Dame. In laboratory experiments, the scientists showed that alumina, an oxide of aluminum that is found in many soils, can greatly accelerate chemical reactions in which gamma rays break down toxic chlorinated chemicals. Gamma rays are high energy X-rays given off by many of the highly radioactive wastes produced in weapons manufacture, such as cobalt-60.

The bad news is that 177 huge underground tanks on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington, which hold 54 million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste, may face an increasing risk of rupture or explosion as volatile gases, including hydrogen and perhaps methane, are generated as the chemicals are broken down by minerals in the tanks. (more)

Hanford finds few takers for leftover cesium
Tri-City Herald – April 4, 1999
After a year of trolling the Internet for companies interested in buying some of Hanford's most radioactive leftovers, officials aren't any closer to making a deal. A year ago, Fluor Daniel Hanford's office of economic transition posted a notice on the Internet asking if businesses were interested in buying cesium, a radioactive waste left from producing plutonium.

The capsules are set to be vitrified - turned into glass logs for permanent storage. That was tentatively scheduled to be done from 2013 to 2018. But in a new proposal, that could start as early as 2007 or 2008. Because waste still in tanks is more diluted and less radioactive than the capsules, the two may be blended together. (more)

New DOE Hanford manager gets mixed reviews
Tri-City Herald -- April 4, 1999
The Department of Energy's new Hanford manager received mostly good marks from observers of his last 4 years in Colorado and New Mexico. The dissenting voices came from two public watchdog groups, who portrayed Keith Klein as a "slick DOE bureaucrat" who talks well but doesn't always follow through. Klein currently is DOE's acting manager for its Waste Isolation Pilot Project. He won't leave WIPP for Hanford until DOE finds a permanent replacement for him in New Mexico. It's unknown when that will happen. (more)

Lawsuit: Hanford N-Site Overcharged Feds
The Salt Lake Tribune – April 8, 1999
Two Hanford nuclear-reservation contractors knowingly overbilled the federal government about $85 million over at least a decade, a former accountant for the contractors alleges in a lawsuit. David Carbaugh also claims he was retaliated against and eventually fired after he complained to supervisors about charges to the government for overhead costs. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court here, follows criticism by government investigators and citizen watchdog groups about the Department of Energy's scrutiny of its contractors' overhead billing. (more)

Suit over downwinder monitoring dismissed
Seattle Times (AP)– April 3, 1999
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to force the Energy Department to fund medical monitoring of people who claimed their health was affected by past Hanford nuclear reservation releases. U.S. District Judge Edward Shea ruled the 14,000 Hanford "downwinders" lacked standing to sue the Energy Department under the federal Superfund law. Shea agreed with government contentions that the agency has sovereign immunity and can't be sued to force payment of nearly $13 million for medical monitoring sought by the downwinders. (more)

Trojan gets close to storing fuel rods
The Oregonian -- April 6, 1999
With concerns about a vault-maker's faulty work record apparently eased, federal and state nuclear regulators are poised to approve a temporary storage system for radioactive spent fuel from the Trojan Nuclear Plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week approved Portland General Electric's plan to place 781 fuel assemblies in large dry storage casks at the Trojan plant near Rainier, 40 miles northwest of Portland.

The utility could begin the yearlong process of moving the spent fuel assemblies into the storage casks by early next month. Currently, PGE stores the rod assemblies, which will remain dangerously radioactive for several centuries, underwater in a spent fuel pool at the Trojan site. Overall, Trojan's decommissioning will cost $435 million. (more)

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: The Two Percent "Solution"
Tri-Valley CAREs -- April 1999
WIPP is the DOE's proposed deep geologic repository for nuclear weapons-generated transuranic waste (containing radioactive elements heavier than uranium, mostly plutonium). WIPP is being excavated in an ancient salt bed in New Mexico, 2,150 feet below the ground. Still under construction, WIPP will ultimately contain 16 square miles of buried plutonium wastes, including up to 850,000 55-gallon drums entombed in 56 rooms, each 300 feet long by 33 feet wide. DOE plans to bring 40,000 truck loads of transuranic waste to WIPP over the next 30 years. [Some of Hanford's transuranic waste will go to WIPP.]

WIPP will leak. Much of the waste slated for WIPP is contaminated with plutonium 239, which has a radioactive half-life of over 24,000 years. [Half of its radioactivity will dissipate in 24,000 years.] A radioactive element's hazardous life is generally calculated at 10 half-lives, in this case 240,000 years.

The WIPP site is surrounded by proven oil and gas reserves and potash deposits. Future mining and drilling operations could hit the waste rooms, releasing massive amounts of radioactivity to the surface. Other drilling operations, such as fluid injection, could cause radioactive releases at WIPP even if the original operation is kept outside the site boundary. Experts don't understand the groundwater system at WIPP very well. The Rustler aquifer, which sits above the WIPP waste rooms has fractures and caverns in it that could transport waste, eventually contaminating drinking water supplies. Pressurized brine reservoirs under the WIPP site could bring wastes to the surface as well. These reservoirs contain large amounts of salt water under high pressure. (more)

Removing the sting from nuclear waste
Las Vegas Sun – April 4, 1999
Scientists at the Department of Energy, UNLV and across the country are working to transform dangerous nuclear elements into less harmful ones instead of burying highly radioactive waste inside Yucca Mountain. The process of transforming elements of matter is called transmutation. Such a change at the atomic level requires a great deal of electrical energy and money, two reasons the idea has never left the laboratory.

Yet many scientists say the process is cheaper than burying all the high-level nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years. In February, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson first offered transmutation as an alternative to burying 77,000 tons of commercial and defense wastes that could end up in Yucca Mountain after 2010, if the site passes scientific muster. The technology does not eliminate the need for a repository, but the most dangerous nuclear materials would be transformed into lower-level waste that would lose its radioactivity in 300 years or less, as opposed to more than 24,000 years without the technology. Without transmutation, highly radioactive nuclear wastes such as plutonium and neptunium take from 24,500 years to 2.3 million years to become harmless.

Transmutation, however, will not work for an estimated 7,000 tons of defense wastes, which are not solid and are very unstable. That waste must be converted to glass logs or encased in ceramic logs to be safe enough to move, then buried deep underground.

Scientists say chances of success on transmutation research are good. The main question is whether the process can be cost-effective and how quickly it can be made available to take care of the nuclear waste stockpiles. Transmutation critics fear that estimates of the low cost are optimistic, and that it will take too long -- up to 20 years -- to prove the technology. (more)