Washington River Protection Solutions

Safety, Enormity of Cleanup Task Stand Out On First Visit to Site

From our office in Washington, D.C., we spend a lot of time writing about milestones and lawsuits, contracts and budgets, policy decisions and appropriations bills - and rightly so. But the view from inside the beltway doesn’t always provide the best vantage point for the Department of Energy’s cleanup program, as I saw first-hand during a three-day tour of Hanford in early April.

It was my first trip to the site and, setting aside for a moment my natural journalistic skepticism, I was truly moved by the work going on there. Many of our readers have spent a good part of their lives working at high-hazard nuclear sites like Hanford, but for someone who is much more comfortable navigating the halls of the U.S. Capitol than, say, walking the grating above the K-East Basin, several things jumped out at me. Most notably, I was impressed by how seriously safety is taken. As many times as I have heard Assistant Secretary Rispoli - and his predecessors - emphasize that working safely is the Department’s top priority, it is a topic that tends to get glossed over unless something bad happens.

Total recordable case rates and lost-time accident figures are hard to interpret from afar. But when it’s your turn to don coveralls, booties and three layers of gloves - all sealed with masking tape, of course - and head out into a contaminated area, those statistics start to hit home. I “dressed out” twice during my visit, once for an hour-and-a-half walkthrough of the C Tank Farm and once for a tour of the K-East Basin. I was struck by the rigorous planning that goes into even the smallest task, the safety briefings I received before I entered any facility and the numerous checks and double-checks required before I set foot in a radiation control area. If that level of preparation goes into merely having me walk around, I can only imagine the work needed to prepare a team to perform more invasive tasks. As I said, impressive.

During my time at Hanford, I was able to spend time examining a wide variety of projects at the site, including D&D work at the 300 Area, retrieval operations at the 618-7 burial grounds, groundwater remediation at 100-N, recent grouting work at K-East Basin, C tank farm, the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility, the Canister Storage Building, the Waste Receiving and Processing Facility, the Cold Test Facility, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility and the Integrated Disposal Facility. The visit was capped off by a two-hour walking tour of the Waste Treatment Plant, practically a small city unto itself. Throughout my time at Weapons Complex Monitor, we’ve published hundreds of articles cataloguing the ups and downs of these projects. But seeing them in the aggregate - and sometimes driving an hour in between projects - gave me a new perspective on the complexity of the cleanup task at Hanford.

First, it gave me a real sense of the progress that has been made at the site. The fact that the leak-prone K-East Basin has been emptied of fuel and is set be dismantled in the coming months is truly amazing. Equally significant is that, with the right funding, the River Corridor cleanup could be finished by 2015, allowing DOE to focus its energies on the center of the site. Most importantly, though, I walked away overwhelmed by the complexity and sheer size of the work yet to be done, especially when it comes to retrieving and vitrifying the liquid waste. Walking through the cavernous Pretreatment and Low-Activity Waste Facilities that are the most complete portions of the Waste Treatment Plant, I found it hard to get my head around the level of precision it will take over the next decade to install the thousands of miles of piping that will be necessary for the bulk of the vit plant’s operations. The challenge of tank retrieval also resonated with me, especially after getting a chance to walk inside a mock waste tank and see the actual tanks from above.

In these pages, you’ll find all manner of articles detailing procurement issues, disputes over funding cuts, regulator concerns, and Congressional criticism. You’ll read about new and innovative approaches to cleaning up the complex, projects that are behind schedule and projects that are being finished quicker than expected. But in the midst of all the back-and-forth, it’s nice to be reminded why everyone is so passionate. The mission at Hanford and across the complex is worth the attention.