People Disagree on Clean-up Efforts to Date at Hanford

I know Hanford is a hot-button issue for a lot of people. But I thought others might be interested in the comments left on a listserv I belong to talking about the subject. Here is one person's opinion of how clean-up efforts are going at Hanford:

Sir, I would take exception to the statement, "The federal government has
made scant progress in cleaning up nuclear waste left-over from decades of
dumping at Hanford."

There has been major progress in the cleanup. We would not
be anywhere near where we are now had it not been for the efforts of hundreds
and thousands of individuals and several agencies. Major buildings have been
removed, hundreds of contaminated sites have been removed or cleaned and years
of planning, permit writing and budgeting have been accomplished.

The work ahead is huge, more than 60 more years. For anyone to think that it can be cleaned up in a couple years is terribly miss informed. We will go through more that ten Presidential administrations, twenty Governors and countless representatives in congress all during the period to clean this up. Cleanup should not be a political process, however getting money for the cleanup is.

The foundation for the cleanup was formed with the Tri Party Agreement more than 15 years ago. We have representatives from EPA, State of Washington, State of Oregon, Tribes, Department of Health, City Governments and citizens that will comment, scrutinize and offer advice on how to protect the people and environment.

Respectfully, Rob Davis

However, others are not convinced.

I would like to offer another perspective. 18 years of cleanup $ 25 billion spent and yes there is progress but hardly where would should be by now.

We have had virtually no cleanup of the groundwater, We are leaving large quantities of waste in the deepervadoze zone that will further contaminate the groundwater. We have no milestones for when the groundwaterwill be cleaned up. We have the Tri-Parties switching the intent and legal requirement for cleanup along the River Corridor from unrestricted to a surface cleanup that is only protective for surface use. We havethe most contaminated part of Hanford the 200 Area/Central Plateau now in its beginning of cleanup where444 billion gallons of
liquid waste was dumped and no hard plans to cleanup the soil and more than likely no plansto deal with the deep soil contamination. We have an admitted 1 million gallons of tank waste that has leaked, more thanlikely a lot more has leaked. The 177 high level waste tanks most all of them have exceeded their design life and now USDOE is delaying the start of the vit plant to deal with the 53 million gallons of high level waste until 2019. This is a blue print fordisaster. Pretty Scary!

Yes we can say we have made progress, a lot of muck and truck hauling and tearing down. K-Basins have been a great success with several delays. A lot of surface cleanup has taken place but now the hard part
begins 18 years later.We have an agency USDOE that has proven time and time again that it can not meet any hard milestones that delays after delays will happen. USDOE has constantly tried ways to do less cleanup, like trying to leave Pre-70 transuranic waste buried, like not dealingwith the deep soil contamination and the list goes on.The people of the NW and the laws demand a more protective cleanup. Surface use cleanup is not acceptable and is not legal.The aquifer needs to be cleaned up, the deep soil contamination needs to be stabilized, or removed, treated and disposed.The River Corridor needs to be cleaned up to an unrestricted use level in order to meet the Trust Responsibility to the Tribesand future generations.The vit plant needs to operate now and not later.The vadoze zone in the Central Plateau needs to be fully characterized to understand how deep the contamination is,what are the volumes and how fast is it moving.The waste under the tanks needs to be cleaned up.We need a credible comprehensive cumulative RIver Corridor Risk Assessment not this so called Baseline Risk Assessmentthat is a joke.

Remember the Baseline Risk Assessment was supposed to be done at the start of cleanup, 18 years ago and it is supposed to look at the current risk and estimate future risk.One thing we have learned in 18 years and 25 billion USDOE is an expert at delaying the real hard issues.It is time for all of to ask is it not perhaps time to rethink who is in charge of cleanup. USDOE has proven to all of us including Congress that it can spend $25 billion and you still not deal with the real issues that threaten
the Columbia River and the people of the NW.

And to top it off USDOE is now proposing to ship more waste and make Hanford the defacto Nations DUMP. I suggest that we who track Hanford have a responsibility to the taxpayers and future generations to change the cleanupparadigm, we have to much proof that USDOE does not intend to do what is legally and morally right. We need to create a NW Cleanup Commission for the cleanup of Hanford and not sacrifice the future using an agency like USDOE thatsimply is failing to do a comprehensive cleanup.If you want to disagree with this suggestion than I ask you to tell me why you trust that USDOE will start up the vit plantin 2019, what basis you have for this.

Please remember in your response that the original vit plant was supposed to startin 2007. Also remember that cleanup for the River Corridor was supposed to be 2018 and that was supposed to a level that allowed unrestricted use. Not just surface use.

Respectfully Greg deBruler