It is quite sad, and telling, that the only active opposition to the US Department of Energy dumping more hazardous nuclear waste at Hanford seems to come from Oregon, those downstream from the project. Senator Wyden is up on the issue, and his statement, reprinted below, captures the feelings of those in Oregon who face disaster should Hanford's nonsense and foolishness get out of control.
Statement of
Senator Ron Wyden Opposing the Department of Energy’s Plans to Increase
Radioactive Waste Disposal at Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Troutdale, Oregon
August 27, 2007
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is already one of the most polluted places on the planet. It currently stores more high-level nuclear waste than any other site in the United States and it is not safely managing all the nuclear waste it already has on-site today. And now, the Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to use Hanford as a national nuclear waste dump. The bottom line is the Energy Department should not be adding more waste to Hanford when it isn’t safely handling the waste it already has on-site.
The Energy Department and its contractors have a long history of mismanagement and failures to protect public health and safety at Hanford over the past twenty years. A report by the contractor responsible for the Hanford tank farms, which store 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and toxic wastes, indicates that removal of all these wastes just from the aging and leaking single shell tanks would not be completed until the year 2032. And even that far off date was based on an invalid assumption that the treatment plant to vitrify these wastes would begin operating in 2014. With recent problems and delays, the waste treatment plant won’t start operating until 2019 at the earliest. Hanford is decades away from dealing with the waste it already has on-site. Sending more waste to Hanford will mean more delay of the cleanup and more danger to workers at the site and the one million people who live downstream.
Just last month, Hanford had a spill of high-level nuclear waste while retrieving it from the single shell tanks that endangered workers at the site. I have requested that the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent DOE safety oversight agency, investigate this spill as well as the entire single shell retrieval program.
Given the long history of mismanagement of waste cleanup at Hanford, the Energy Department’s proposal to bring more waste to Hanford is essentially a proposal to turn Hanford and the Northwest into a national sacrifice zone.
According to news reports, DOE is now planning to dispose of an additional amount radioactive waste at Hanford that is equal to the contamination estimated from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown, or about three-quarters of the radiation contained in 177 leak-prone underground tanks already located at Hanford.
The waste under discussion at today’s hearing is the most radioactive in the low-level category. Federal officials concede that some of it is as radioactive as high-level waste, which includes spent nuclear fuel. The inventory is also likely to contain "transuranic waste," often contaminated with plutonium and likely to remain radioactive for thousands of years.
As many of you know, I have long been concerned about the DOE’s history of unkept promises to clean-up Hanford. I say, enough is enough. It’s time to address the current problems and not add additional risks and dangers by adding huge volumes of additional nuclear wastes to Hanford. Over some 45 years, Hanford produced some 74 tons of plutonium, first to make nuclear weapons and later as part of its continued operation of the N-Reactor despite the fact that it was no longer needed. The results are well known to all. Some 1,600 identified waste sites. Some 53 million gallons of high-level waste stored in 177 underground storage tanks. Sixty-seven of those 177 tanks are suspected to have leaked that waste into the soil. The list goes on.
What is amazing to me is that DOE has now been trying to clean up the nuclear waste and environmental contamination for half as long as the site was actually in operation – more than 20 years – with no end in sight. We are now coming up on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Tri-Party Agreement between DOE, the State of Washington, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that was supposed to set specific, enforceable milestones for the clean-up. Instead, we’re miles away from meeting those cleanup goals.
In March of this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a fine of more than $1 million for the failure of DOE’s contractor to properly manage the existing low-level nuclear waste disposal facility – the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. This fine shows that DOE is not properly managing the low-level nuclear waste it already has on site. How can the Department be seriously considering sending more of the same waste to Hanford?
The situation with Hanford’s high-level nuclear waste is even more troubling. The high-level waste vitrification plant was supposed to be completed and in operation by 2011 according to the Tri-Party Agreement. It is now being delayed another eight years and construction won’t be completed until 2019 at a cost that has more than doubled – from $5.8 billion estimated in 2003 to this year’s estimate of $12.3 billion. And the plan still leaves no solution for more than half of the so-called low-activity waste that is supposed to be removed from the tanks and which also has to be vitrified. There’s still no plan for dealing with the waste that has leaked out of the tanks. There’s still no plan for dealing with strontium and cesium capsules that have been retrieved from all over the country from another failed DOE program to spin gold out of nuclear waste.
In March 2006, I requested that the Inspector General conduct an investigation into the safety of the waste vitrification plant after a former employee of Bechtel National, Inc – the U.S. Department of Energy’s principle contractor for the Hanford Nuclear Waste Treatment Plant Project – raised concerns about his former employer’s use of unproven and flawed control systems.
Last May, in response to my request, the DOE Inspector General issued report which stated that the control system intended for use at Hanford, “does not meet the stringent procedures, plans specifications, or work practices associated with nuclear quality standards.” I subsequently wrote to Energy Secretary Bodman asking what the Energy Department planned to do to address the Inspector General’s findings. I have yet to receive a substantive response from Secretary Bodman. This hardly inspires confidence in DOE’s ability to safely process the high-level tank wastes any time soon.
My point here is a simple one. DOE has not fulfilled its obligation to clean up Hanford. It’s not clear when it will. But now, DOE is proposing to bring more waste to Hanford – this time in the form of waste from commercial nuclear power plants, medical wastes and other nuclear processing facilities.
Hanford should have less nuclear waste, not more. It should be cleaned up, not dumped upon. So, today, I am putting myself on the record as being fiercely opposed to DOE’s plans to dump more waste at Hanford and I will do everything in my power to fight to keep it from happening.
