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Hanford Watch letter to Congress The clean up of the 580 square miles of Hanford Nuclear Reservation concerns everyone in the Pacific Northwest. 54 million gallons of high level toxic waste sitting adjacent to the Columbia in Hanford's tanks pose a greater risk to the public and to the environment as each year passes. Sixty-seven tanks out of the 177 buried tanks have been known to leak in the past threatening the Columbia River again (which was the most irradiated river in the Western Hemisphere in the 1980s). Eventually all tanks will leak. We asked last year for full funding and tighter oversight of Bechtel's Vitrification plant, which is to treat the 54 million gallons of highly toxic nuclear waste contained in the aging underground tanks at Hanford. In the past 18 months DOE management has worked to change the culture of both the management and engineering of the Waste Treatment Plant (WPT). With the external reviews that have been conducted with the support of Congress, and with the beginning of the Technical Readiness Reviews and Assessments that allow DOE to grade the maturity of the technology that drives the success of the WPT, we can have much greater confidence in moving forward with the project. Bechtel's new management is beginning to make the changes necessary to move this project forward. Congress needs to continue to follow progress closely and hold Bechtel accountable for its work. The next 12 months are crucial in showing that Bechtel can produce and deliver on the technical mistakes that have been made along the way. We also feel that the results of the external reviews of the past many months have induced movement forward and would like to acknowledge these successes. We ask that Congress remain committed to the level funding of $690 million per year. It may also be necessary to begin considering building one or two new double shell tanks, given the extended time for the completion of the WTP. These tanks, though costly, would serve as a back up if any of our tanks fail and could be used to expedite waste pretreatment for low activity waste (LAW) so that we can get on with cleanup. Most of the focus thus far has been on getting the high-level waste (HLW) pretreatment and glassification moving forward, but there is something to be said for moving forward with LAW treatment to reduce the volume of tank wastes sitting underground. It is feasible that work could move forward more quickly using this approach while Bechtel and DOE continue to work through the challenges of pretreating HLW and turning in into glass. Much work is taking place on site toward integration of all the activities needed to insure complete cleanup. Many programs are working hard to integrate their scope across the site, especially the ground water remediation programs that affect the whole of Hanford where progress is promising. However, much of the work on determining how to treat and dispose of wastes on site and those planned to arrive at the site need to be designed to be comprehensive-building appropriate treatment facilities and meeting the waste acceptance criteria for each kind of waste. This work needs to cover all wastes from cradle to grave. This is a management and oversight problem that DOE needs to get its arms around. In determining final outcomes of waste disposition, including the work in progress of the Tank Closure and Waste Management EIS, independent oversight is a must, beginning at the modeling stage of all cleanup planning at Hanford. The Vitrification Plant at Hanford is the largest construction project in the United States. The goal is to "make safe" the massive amount of nuclear waste there. This is very important. However, allocating billions of dollars to cleaning up toxic waste while at the same time providing billions of dollars to researching the new, "safe" nuclear power plants of the future, the focus on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) of this past year presents a conflicting mission as well as a muddled and visionless policy decision. This continued effort shows that the DOE not only lacks an overarching sustainable vision, but also has too many conflicting missions. The GNEP proposal is based on a false hope of disposing of nuclear waste (it creates more) and of meeting our energy needs of the future, with no consideration of exorbitant costs and the lack of waste repository in this country. No country has found a satisfactory way to dispose of these long-lived wastes for the hundreds of thousands of years they will remain toxic. GNEP seems like a cash cow for the nuclear industry rather than a serious solution for our energy needs. We must all, with leadership from Congress, acknowledge and face the consequences of diverting our land and dollar resources to poor and highly toxic choices. Major rivers such as the Savannah and the Columbia are dying. Our people are dying of cancers from irradiated dust blowing in the Western wind, and toxic waste is being trucked down our highways to storage facilities. As an overarching policy, we not only support stable and continued funding for Hanford clean-up and all nuclear waste sites in this country, but also a common sense and visionary leadership at the DOE. Our future energy solutions must include not only restoring our environment, but safe and truly sustainable energy options with research and supportive legislation across the board. We request the following from the Congress:
We count on Congress to insure the safety and health of our region. Paige Knight |