[ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford last night

[Muckerheide, James]

Sandy et al.,

See below: "Lethal and Leaking"

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
====================


> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of
> Sandy Perle
> Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 2:21 PM
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford last night
> 
> This was a scathing report on DOE and the Hanford clean-up process. I
> know how 60 Minutes can skew information and manipulate the final
> product. However, there were DOE Management, Washington State
> Governor and others interviewed.
> 
> Haven't seen this mentioned on Radsafe, so, what is the take from our
> Hanford colleagues regarding the telecast?
> 
> -------------------------------------
> Sandy Perle


Lethal And Leaking

April 30, 2006
CBS News
Produced By Rich Bonin

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553896.shtml

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting different results. Well, that's what critics accuse the
U.S. Department of Energy of: making the same mistakes over and over in a
project that has already squandered billions of dollars in taxpayers' money.
But the risk here is far greater than financial, since it involves highly
toxic nuclear waste.

At stake are millions of gallons of radioactive liquid waste left over from
the making of nuclear bombs, including the one that was dropped on Nagasaki.
This waste has been sitting in underground tanks in Hanford, Wash., ever
since, while the government tries to figure out how to clean it up. As
correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, the waste is so lethal that a small cup
of it would kill everyone in a crowded restaurant, in minutes.


60 Minutes recently visited Hanford, where the witches' brew is being stored.
Hanford, located along the Columbia River, is home to the most contaminated
piece of real estate in the world outside of Russia.

It is contaminated by waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons.
There are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in
underground tanks that are now so old they have leaked one million gallons of
the stuff.

Some of it leaked into the groundwater, and it's heading right for the river.
With a million people downstream, there's a sense of urgency about cleaning
up the site, which is huge. It takes up 586 square miles in southeastern
Washington.

But for the Energy Department, which runs the project, it's been a case of
easier said than done. In the nearly 16 years 60 Minutes has been covering
this story, it's been one foul up after the next.

Charles Anderson, the Energy Department's official overseeing nuclear clean
up, gave Stahl a tour of what has been built so far at Hanford, starting with
a replica of the underground tanks.

"This is a model of tanks that are already built that have waste in them. Be
careful with your head here as we go in," Anderson told Stahl during the
tour.

The tank can hold 750,000 gallons of waste. Many of the tanks, built for the
Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapons, are more than 60
years old.

Anderson explains there are a total of 177 tanks holding "high-level" waste
at this site.

The plan is to pump the waste out of the tanks and route it through miles of
pipes to a yet-to-be-completed pre-treatment facility. The idea is to convert
the radioactive waste into glass logs.

"This is where the radioactive waste will come from the tank farms, will come
from those tanks and will come in here and be treated in different chemical
processes and be turned into glass logs for final disposition to be disposed
of in a landfill," Anderson explains.

Stahl last visited the area in 2001, when the site was just a field. Anderson
says significant progress has been made. "The plant's 35 percent complete in
regard to construction," he says.

But the place is a total ghost town. What happened?

What happened here is that after three years of welding, pouring cement and
laying miles of pipes and tons of steel, construction came to a screeching
halt in 2005 because the Energy Department underestimated by 40 percent how
strong the building must be to withstand an earthquake. We're talking about a
building that would be full of radioactive liquid.


"In a building like this, you need to build it to ensure that it withstands
whatever an earthquake may pose - if there is one - because we absolutely do
not want a breech of this radioactive material in the atmosphere," says Gene
Aloise of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative
arm.

But here's what 60 Minutes has learned: that the Energy Department and the
contractor, Bechtel, went ahead with the plant knowing their seismic standard
might be off. Just as construction was about to begin in July 2002, an
independent safety board sent a letter, warning the department.

"Energy debated with the safety board for almost two years over the
standards," says Aloise.

"Ok, let me understand this. This is brought up as an issue in 2002. Instead
of going back right then, they debate until 2005, during which time they're
building the building?" Stahl asked Aloise.

"They're building the building," he replied.

They were building it using the wrong seismic standard. Because they did
factor in some margin of safety, the contractor, Bechtel, has told the Energy
Department there is no restructuring required on the foundation or the walls.

But Aloise says what they do have to fix are the internal components of the
building. "Hangers, piping, vessel supports, all of this interior of the
building, where the technology's going to rest. That all has to be
re-engineered," he explains. "They have to re-do tens of thousands of
designs."

The seismic miscalculation is costing at least $800 million and a two- to
four-year delay in completing the building. This practice of pushing ahead
with construction before the engineering is complete is known as "fast
track."

"The people in the state of Washington who are living with this thing, they
don't want it to slow down, they want it to speed up," Stahl remarked.

"But it doesn't work in our view on complex, technical nuclear facilities
like the ones in Hanford," Aloise replied.

Asked what he would tell the people of Washington, Aloise said, "That we need
to do it right."

Fast track was singled out as a major problem five years ago when 60 Minutes
last reported on the cleanup.

Gary Jones, a GAO investigator in 2001, told 60 Minutes that they had rushed
ahead with construction of this building at a similar site in Idaho before
the designs were finished. We asked about it back then.

"You're saying they went ahead and built the building and then when they were
finished making all the changes, the equipment wouldn't fit in the building?"
Stahl asked Jones in the report five years ago.

"The equipment for this particular process would not fit into the building as
designed," Jones replied.

Five years ago, 60 Minutes was assured the government had learned from its
mistakes and things were finally under control. And yet, since then, costs
have gone through the roof, up more than 150 percent, and the start date for
making those glass logs has slipped seven years, to 2018. The seismic error
was only one of several snafus.


Tom Carpenter of the watchdog group called Government Accountability Project
got hold of internal Energy Department and Bechtel documents which reveal a
series of problems with a special tank for processing or scrubbing the
nuclear waste. The problems began when Bechtel hired an outside vendor to
build it.

"They gave the wrong design specs to the manufacturer," says Carpenter. ...
"They gave them a less strict nuclear design."

According to the documents, when the tank arrived at Hanford it had "cracked
stay welds." They were fixed. But then "different types of weld defects" were
discovered. And yet Bechtel went ahead and installed the scrubber tank
anyway.

"They still said, 'We can fix those when the tank's installed.' So they went
ahead and installed it with defects, all right?" Carpenter says. "Knowing it,
okay. So at this point they, Bechtel, demanded and then received a $15
million bonus for meeting a milestone."

Bechtel wouldn't give 60 Minutes an on-camera interview, but did say that the
$15 million wasn't a "bonus," it was a fee. In any event, after they got the
money, a "new deficiency was discovered" by "independent inspectors for
Washington state."

This new deficiency, says Carpenter, was discovered after the tank was
installed.

Carpenter says, "The red flag goes up and a full inspection is then ordered
on the tank. Well, the full inspection should've been done at the factory
where they built the tank."

Asked whether this inspection was part of the contract, Carpenter says,
"Sure."

The full inspection finally led Bechtel to realize the tank was not up to
specification. But Carpenter says that's not all.

"The design flaws that led to this tank being deficient applied to 66 other
vessels," Carpenter explains. "Seven of which had already been built.... And
they had to go and redesign the ones that had not been built, and fix the
ones that had been built. It really raises a big question about, well, what
have they not caught out there? What other equipment or tools, or machine, is
installed maybe under feet of concrete that these programs failed to catch?
Because their programs failed. The contractor failed. The Department of
Energy failed. It took an independent inspector to find new deficiencies.
Where is the adult supervision here? We're talking a nuclear facility
handling some of the worst waste in the world, and they're fast tracking it?
Excuse me."


60 Minutes asked Charles Anderson of the Department of Energy about this.

"When you hear they gave the wrong design specifications - you almost can't
believe it - on one piece of equipment, and then when you hear it's been
repeated over and over, I mean, that doesn't sound like the Department of
Energy is managing the situation very well," Stahl said.

"There's a number of those issues that have occurred. Those issues have been
identified and corrected but there's also a large, large percentage of
equipment where the specs have been correctly given, the equipment's been
purchased correctly," Anderson replied.

"But there shouldn't be mistakes like that in a plant like this, should
there?" Stahl asked.

"Well, Lesley, in a large complex facility, a project like this, you do have
mistakes," he replied.

Anderson acknowledged they are big mistakes. "I would agree that there are
big mistakes here that we are taking control of and we're correcting," he
says.

"You know, I'm getting a little deja vu here because when we were here in
2001 it was the same thing. 'We figured it out. It's better now. No problem
any more.' Do you think, being candid with us, that the department's up to
this?" Stahl asked.

"Well here's what's different now. We've taken steps to provide increased
oversight, to reach out for increased external reviews," Anderson replied.
"To complete this important work of disposing of, stabilizing and then
disposing of this waste."

Anderson says that the leaking tanks have been stabilized and that there's
virtually no chance of further seepage. But Christine Gregoire, the governor
of Washington State, who has worked on this issue from the beginning, doesn't
believe that for one minute.

"Let me tell you the story. 1989: They told me there was zero chance that
there would be any leakage and ground water contamination. Sixteen years
later, we have confirmed 67 leakers, groundwater contamination. I told them
then, 'Gravity works like this.' And I'll tell them again today: gravity
means we are very vulnerable to the groundwater contamination and a plume
that we now have moving towards the Columbia River, which is the lifeline of
our Pacific Northwest," Gov. Gregoire says.

Asked what she meant by a "plume," the governor said, "We've got an area that
is contaminated in the groundwater and is migrating towards the Columbia
River. And if it gets there, Lesley, we have an absolute disaster on our
hands."

She's worried about a move in Congress to cut the budget for the Hanford
clean-up.

"I can understand the frustration in Congress," the governor says. "Frankly,
they are no more frustrated than me. But the last thing we need is to send a
message to this country that it's OK to walk away. It is not. The chances of
a catastrophic event over there are real. Time is not on our side. We need to
get going."