Audit: Groundwater Cleaning Ineffective

["Ottley, David B (Dave)" <David_B_Dave_Ottley@RL.GOV>]

Concerning the audit of the ineffectiveness of the groundwater cleanup at

Hanford.  The Tri-Cities Herald reported that, "DOE spent more than $85

million over the past eight years and will continue to spend about $8

million a year to operate pump-and-treat systems. 

DOE has agreed previously that its pump-and-treat system for a radioactive

strontium plume near the Columbia River is ineffective. The audit said that

from 1995 to 2002, the system removed 1.3 curies of strontium. At the same

time, 319.3 curies naturally decayed in the ground water. 

DOE has proposed stopping the program to get a baseline reading on

contamination and then trying a new approach. That could be using trenches

or wells to inject minerals into the ground to increase the capacity of the

soil to bind the strontium in place while it decays naturally. 

The Washington State Department of Ecology has objected to halting the

strontium pump-and-treat program, except for testing, until a new program is

in place. Pump and treat does have limited benefits, the state told the

federal government. 

The Department of Ecology says that the contamination would decay naturally

in 300 years, but the pump-and-treat program could reduce that by 10

percent, to 270 years."

This is over $65 million per Curie for less than a half percent increase

beyond natural decay!  The dose that has been saved is not measurable, it

can only be estimated using dose-modeling and is a fraction of a mrem per

year.  At least DOE realizes this.  It is too bad that the State wants to

spend federal (our) money so frivolously.

David Ottley

Kennewick, Washington