[ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford last night

Tue May 2 14:44:27 CDT 2006

Jim,
I would say it is hard to convince people that we know
how to handle nuclear waste when we have DOE on our
side.

--- "Muckerheide, James" <jimm at WPI.EDU> wrote:

> Sandy, John, et al.
> 
> I sent the 60 minutes piece because it was the
> subject. We all know here that
> the pejorative crap is typical media staging,
> especially by the TV newsmags.
> 
> 
> Here's another cut at the info, also rather biased. 
> But this and other
> recent info/reports indicate that this seems to be
> yet another DOE project
> boondoggle.  DOE hasn't shown any substantial
> engineering and project
> management ability since before Clinch River and
> ERDA.
> 
> See full article at:
>
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/268605_hanford01.html
> 
> Regards, Jim Muckerheide
> ====================
> 
> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
>
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/268605_hanford01.html
> 
> Hanford cleanup cost soars to $11.3 billion ... if
> Congress will pay 
> Monday, May 1, 2006
> By LISA STIFFLER AND CHARLES POPE
> P-I REPORTERS
> 
> It's costing Americans $1.4 million a day to build a
> facility to safely treat
> millions of gallons of radioactive and toxic waste
> stored in the Hanford
> Nuclear Reservation's leak-prone underground tanks. 
> 
> [Related article
> - Evidence of new leaks, group reports]
> 
> 
> When the project is completed, the bill could total
> $38 for every man, woman
> and child in the nation -- that's if the $11.3
> billion price tag doesn't
> swell even further. It has nearly tripled in less
> than six years, making it a
> massive taxpayer burden. 
> 
> This is a critical time for the project. An
> increasingly impatient Congress
> is now deciding how much money to contribute to the
> effort -- considered the
> most important step in the cleanup of the sprawling
> desert site on the
> Columbia River. Some fear lawmakers could simply
> wash their hands of it and
> walk away. 
> 
> "The whole house of cards is ready to collapse,"
> said Gerald Pollet, director
> of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog
> group. 
>  
> 
> [Photo File
>  These double-walled tanks at Hanford each hold 1
> million gallons of highly
> radioactive nuclear waste from bomb making. Built in
> 1984, they were later
> covered with 5 feet of dirt. The liquid waste that's
> inside them is slated to
> be pumped out and turned into glass.
> The challenge of safely disposing of 53 million
> gallons of deadly waste left
> over from decades of plutonium production has caused
> the U.S. Department of
> Energy and its contractors to stumble repeatedly.]
> 
> 
> Weak -- even negligent -- management has pushed the
> project's completion from
> 2011 back to 2017 or later and driven costs up by
> billions, according to
> reports from government agencies, the Army Corps of
> Engineers and watchdog
> groups. 
> 
> At the same time, environmental and health risks are
> mounting. The corrosive
> waste weakens the walls of the tanks and the risk of
> leaks keeps growing,
> regulators admit.
> 
> The federal officials running the Hanford cleanup
> and their contractors
> apologize for the delays and errors in cost
> calculations. They promise to do
> better. 
> 
> "Everything that I do on this project each day is to
> identify with certainty
> what the costs and schedule basis is, and to restore
> confidence and
> credibility in this project," said John Eschenberg,
> the Energy Department's
> manager for the project.
> 
> Construction is under way on the massive
> "vitrification" project, which one
> day would turn the waste into a glassy compound that
> will trap the
> radioactive material for safe storage. But the
> department's contractor --
> construction giant Bechtel National Inc. -- has had
> to put the brakes on most
> of the building due to safety and technical
> problems. 
> 
> Countless additional factors have helped drive up
> costs. They include the
> initial miscalculation of the amount and cost of
> materials needed for the
> project and underestimation of the technical and
> regulatory hurdles facing
> the facility. In March, a team of experts identified
> more than two dozen
> issues that could prevent the plant from working as
> planned. The plant was
> expected to operate for nearly two decades.
> 
> The mounting setbacks have sent state leaders
> recently to Washington, D.C.,
> to beseech lawmakers to keep funding the costly
> endeavor near Richland. 
> 
> Next week government officials will come to Seattle
> to explain publicly how
> much money is needed to support the Hanford cleanup,
> including the
> vitrification project, and to get feedback on where
> it's being spent.
> 
> The case is getting harder to make. Some worry
> Congress or the Energy
> Department could scrap the vitrification project,
> perhaps opting to build new
> storage tanks and putting the waste there. Another
> option is using a cheaper,
> but less safe, technology for treating the waste
> plaguing Hanford -- a key
> player in World War II's Manhattan Project.
> Comments at an April 6 congressional hearing
> examining Hanford's problems
> heightened that fear. 
> 
> "I'm convinced now that after learning about the
> failures of project
> management, the neglect of nuclear safety quality
> assurances and the
> uncontrollable costs we will hear about today that
> this project is on a fast
> road to failure," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio.
> 
> Hobson's dark opinion is important because he chairs
> the subcommittee
> providing money for cleaning up Hanford and other
> Energy Department plants.
> 
> Everyone agrees the project is challenging. In the
> decades since Hanford
> fired up the first reactor in 1944, a mishmash of
> waste has been dumped into
> 177 tanks in the quest for weapons-grade plutonium.
> The tanks -- which some
> say may have leaked recently -- store millions of
> gallons of chemically
> complex liquids, sludge and chunky salt cake. 
> 
> Those responsible for problems with the
> vitrification project frequently put
> much of the blame on its unique nature. 
> 
> "After all, it was a first of a kind, never been
> built anywhere in the world,
> much less in the United States," Tom Hash, Bechtel's
> president of systems and
> infrastructure, told Hobson's subcommittee. 
> 
> That statement, however, was not entirely accurate. 
> 
> Savannah River echoes
> 
> Hanford isn't the Energy Department's only
> radioactive headache. 
> South Carolina's Savannah River Site was established
> in the early 1950s to
> produce plutonium and radioactive hydrogen to arm
> nuclear weapons. 
> 
> 
=== message truncated ===

+++++++++++++++++++
"People will be shocked to see how safe it is to live in New York City."
ANDREW KARMEN, a sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, on murder trends in the city.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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