[ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford last night

[Dukelow, James S Jr]

Sandy Perle wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl on behalf of Sandy Perle
Sent: Mon 5/1/2006 11:20 AM
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?

=====================

I did not see the 60 minutes piece, having quit watching it and network news, in general, about 25 years ago, when CBS illustrated TMI with a graphic of a containment dome with a pan of water with a fire under it inside the dome and complemented that by introducing Ernest Sternglass as an expert commentator.  Sternglass commented, "Run for the hills, you're all going to die", or words to that effect.

The cause for the Vit plant stop work was new seismic information that suggested that parts of the plant might not designed (and in some cases already built) to rigorous enough seismic standards.  Older Hanford buildings wera all built to Uniform Building Code Seismic Zone 2 standards.  Hanford was generally considered a low seismic area, with an instrumental record of  fairly frequent small (Richter 3 and change) onsite quakes and a Richter 5+ quake a few decades ago about 50 miles north at Smyrna on the other side of the Saddle Mountains anticline.  An extended period of seismicity perhaps 5 to 15 million years ago is reflected in two separate families of anticlines/synclines, one East-West trending and the other Northwest-Southeast trending.  Pretty quiet now, though.

An interesting question mark on Hanford seismicity is the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament, a seismic feature that runs from the Olympic Peninsula, directly underneath the middle of the Seattle area, over Snoqualmie Pass (and, in all probability, the reason for the existence of Snoqualmie Pass), down through the upper Yakima River Valley, under several East-West trending anticlines, directly in front of Rattlesnake Mountain (on the Hanford site(, and on southeast under the Blue Mountains in Oregon, ending at the Wallowa Mountains in norhteastern Oregon.  If you want to see geologists collectively scratching their heads, google "Olympic Wallowa Lineament".  Nobody knows whether it will support current seismicity.  I have placed my bets by building a house a couple hundred yards from the OWL.

I haven't followed the details of the Vit plant seismic reanalysis, so I did a little digging.  The most plausible description of the problem I found was in the minutes of the 14 April 2005 meeting of the Tank Waste Committee of the Hanford Advisory Board.  The HAB is an interesting critter -- a collection of stakeholders comprising anti-nuclear activitists, Hanford site employees, and representatives of interested governmental and non-governmental organizations, including at least one RADSAFE contributor.  The HAB committee reports are available at <www.hanford.gov/public/boards/hab/>.

Quoting from the HAB committee report:

"Lew Miller, DOE-ORP, updated the committee on the seismic report for the WTP.  He provided the context for seismic concerns, and explained how improvements in computer measuring techniques for measuring how earthquakes in other areas could impact the WTP have created the need for further analysis.  The initial seismic study tried to model the 200 East and 200 West areas, using an assumption of 500 feet of sand and gravel beneath the sites.  There is actually closer to 600 feet of sand and gravel under the WTP, which has an absorbing effect on earthquake impacts.  Underneath the sand and gravel there are layers of basalt bedrock, with interspersed layers of mudstone and siltstone.  The bedrock layers have an attenuating effect on earthquake impacts, however, no measurements were taken of seismic wave movements through these layers in the initial study.  In 1996, the assumptions was that the layers are more like soldi bedrock; with the identified layers of mudstone and siltstone, the area of bedrock is now actually believed to attenuate earthquake impacts less.  The new seismic report used models that accounted for the layers attenuating less, which amounts to a 40% increas in impacts where buildings are most sensitive."

"Lew explained how DOE plans to utilize the new data in the design of the WTP to meet new seismic standards.  Depending on what state the design is in determines what type of corrective action needs to be taken.  Most design work that has been done is robust enough to account for new seismic data, so few changes need to be made in those areas."

"A dynamic analysis will be coming out soon, which will model the entire building to show how an earthquake would impact the entire building.  Modeling can also be done component by component to assess seismic impacts."

Subsequent HAB committee meetings have focussed more on the budget and schedule impact of the seismic reanalysis.

A comment on the rather trashy coverage by our local big-city newspapers and comments by our governor (who I voted for and rather like).  Christine Gregoire sounds the alarm about tank waste in the groundwater and moving -- gasp -- toward the Columbia River.  This is not science (well, perhaps, political science).  The flow of the Columbia River is three to four orders of magnitude greater than the flow of Hanford groundwater into the Columbia.  During all the years of Hanford contamination of the Columbia, radionuclide contamination has never been above EPA drinking water standards and will not be in the future.  Hanford radionuclide contributions to the Columbia are in the noise of the natural radionuclides coming down out of the mountains.  I am on a well now, but drank Columbia River water (downstream from Hanford) for 25 years.  You should all have such nice water.

Best regards.

Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA
jim.dukelow at pnl.gov

These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.