ECA Update: November 26, 2012
Published: Mon, 11/26/12
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Udall Wants NNSA Reform
Michael Coleman, ABQ Journal
November 21, 2012
Michael Coleman, ABQ Journal
November 21, 2012
WASHINGTON - Sen. Tom Udall wants Congress to create a panel that would suggest ways to reform the National Nuclear Security Administration - the federal agency with oversight of New Mexico's nuclear laboratories that Udall says is plagued with problems.
The New Mexico Democrat and Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who will retire at the end of the year, have introduced an amendment to the pending Defense Authorization Bill asking for the establishment of the advisory panel.
The NNSA's responsibilities include Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico, which together employ about 20,000 people.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat who is retiring in January after 30 years in the Senate, told the Journal this month that shuttering the agency completely might not be a bad idea.
"I've always had problems with the NNSA as another level of bureaucracy between the secretary of energy and the labs," Bingaman said. "It doesn't give me any heartburn to think that we would revisit the decision to set up the NNSA. I think it would make some sense."
A spokeswoman for Udall emphasized Tuesday that Udall's amendment is not aimed at dismantling the NNSA.
"He wants this study to be done," Udall spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said. "That is not part of this study at all."
"The NNSA has been plagued over the last few years with cost overruns, security breaches and management issues," Udall said in a statement provided to the Journal on Tuesday. "These issues have impacted the scientific and nuclear stockpile stewardship missions of the national labs in New Mexico and have an impact on national security and safety of the workers there.
"Sen. Kyl and I are working on a bipartisan amendment to create an advisory panel that would make recommendations regarding NNSA reform in order to further its important national security mission," Udall added.
The panel would "assess the feasibility and advisability of, and make recommendations with respect to, revising the governance structure of the National Nuclear Security Administration," according to Udall's office.
The 12-member panel's membership would be bipartisan, with members appointed from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. The members would be appointed for one year and would be responsible for submitting a report within 120 days of passage of the amendment.
A vote on the amendment could come as soon as next week, Padilla said.
She said the panel would make specific recommendations, including how to improve scientific work, safety and employee retention. The study would also explore ways to diversify the national labs' missions.
Among the directives in the amendment is a requirement that the panel consider whether oversight of the nation's nuclear weapons complex should "remain with the administration or be transferred to another agency." Some NNSA critics have suggested the nuclear weapons labs should fall under the purview of the Department of Defense, not DOE.
The NNSA, which is part of the Department of Energy, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as its budgets have expanded, and some in Congress have questioned the national laboratories' priorities and performance. Udall and some other members of New Mexico's congressional delegation have repeatedly said the labs should adjust their mission to include more research and development of clean energy technologies.
The NNSA was established by Congress in 2000, after several scandals and security breaches - and with a significant push from then-Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. - as a separately organized agency within the U.S. Department of Energy.
The NNSA is responsible for the management and security of the nation's nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation and naval reactor programs.
Padilla also noted Udall's long-standing interest in forcing the labs to expand their missions to remain relevant in the 21st century. Before his election to the U.S. Senate in 2008, Udall served for 10 years as the U.S. House representative for New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District, which includes Los Alamos.
LANL's budget took a big hit this year when Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that DOE was postponing for at least five years a multibillion-dollar plutonium project at the northern New Mexico lab.
Rep. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat who will replace Bingaman in the U.S. Senate in January, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Help for Small Nuclear Reactors
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog
November 21, 2012
The Energy Department, seeking to promote the development of a small modular reactor that could be factory-built and cheaply installed, on Tuesday chose a consortium consisting of Babcock & Wilcox, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel International to receive a dollar-for-dollar cost match in the creation of a prototype.
The department said the amount of money involved had yet to be negotiated. But the Obama administration has been seeking $500 million to spend over five years on two projects.
Two other initiatives are in the wings, including a team-up of Westinghouse and Ameren Missouri. Ameren has discussed the possibility of small reactors that could be installed on the sites of 1950's-era coal plants as those are retired, possibly reusing some assets. Ameren and Westinghouse held a "supplier summit" last month in St. Louis attended by nearly 300 businesses.
The Energy Department said it would solicit additional applicants.
The T.V.A. has discussed placing a modular reactor at a site where the government once planned to build a breeder reactor that would make plutonium faster than it consumed uranium, adding to the stock of reactor fuel. It is one of a number of reactor concepts in Tennessee that did not reach fruition.
The idea behind small reactors is that they could be built in a factory that would allow for lower costs through serial production, if not actual mass production. Factory fabrication would also make quality control easier. The reactor would be shipped by barge or rail car, and modules could be added as demand grew.
Small reactors could be easier to cool if an accident occurred. And some analysts say that they could make good export products for use in countries with weak grids that would be destabilized by huge reactors.
A major hurdle for new models is obtaining a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that presents a chicken-and-egg problem for would-be manufacturers. They would find it hard to sell a new model before it is licensed but would be reluctant to spend the tens of millions of dollars necessary to get a license before orders have been placed. One of the purposes of the Energy Department aid is to make the licensing process less onerous.
Over the years since the first commercial reactors were built, designers have tended to make them larger and larger, believing that production costs would fall as fixed costs like operators, security, fuel handling and so on would be spread over larger output.
Whether small reactors could make electricity at prices per kilowatt-hour that compete with those of big ones has yet to be demonstrated. But so few big reactors are being built these days that there is enthusiasm for trying a different route.
DOE IG Report, Questioned, Unresolved and Potentially Unallowable Costs Incurred by Los Alamos National Laboratory During Fiscal Year 2010
DOE Inspector General
November 26, 2012
DOE Inspector General
November 26, 2012
On November 19, 2012, we issued a separate contract audit report on Assessment of Audit Coverage of Cost Allowability for Los Alamos National Laboratory during Fiscal Year 2010 under Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 (OAS-V-13-01, November 2012). The objectives of the assessment included determining whether questioned costs and internal control weaknesses that were identified in audits and reviews and impacting allowable costs had been adequately resolved and whether Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos) conducted or arranged for audits of its subcontractors when costs incurred were a factor in determining the amount payable to a subcontractor. We identified approximately $50,000 in questioned and unresolved costs claimed by Los Alamos during Fiscal Year 2010. We also identified nearly $24 million in subcontract costs requiring audit; nearly $1.4 million in unresolved questioned subcontract costs; and, approximately $10.7 million in unresolved costs pertaining to a potential Anti-Deficiency Act violation. Finally, we identified more than $434 million in previously reported unresolved costs from prior years. The National Nuclear Security Administration's management agreed with the findings and recommendations and provided proposed corrective actions.
Another Historic Idaho Atomic Reactor
Jay Michaels, KMVT
November 15, 2012
Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho (KMVT-TV) A silver dome rises from a group of buildings in the desert 50 miles west of Idaho Falls. This is where Experimental Breeder Reactor Two was built in the 1950s, and went online in 1964 at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Don Miley, Director of INL Tours, says, "One of the best descriptions I've heard is a pot of boiling spaghetti, where you've got all the heat at the bottom of the pot, and you see your spaghetti rise to the top, and then brought back to the bottom. It's rising because it's heating, and then as the heat dissipates, it drops to the bottom again. That's what EBR-II did because of its very unique design."
In 1986, EBR-II operators ran a test where they disabled the reactor's safety systems, and then turned off the sodium coolant pumps. The reactor shut itself down in five minutes with no damage to the fuel. Three weeks later, the meltdown at Chernobyl, Russia happened, which Miley says wouldn't have occurred if they'd been using EBR-II technology.
Van Sandifer, Deputy Director for Nuclear Operations at INL says, "EBR-II had almost 9 million megawatt hours during that period. It actually had a power plant that produces 20 megawatts of electricity from a turbine generator that supplied part of the electrical load here at the site and out on the loop."
EBR-II was decommissioned in 1994, but it supplied a third to half of INL's power needs during the 30 years it was in operation. Since then, the reactor and all of the related materials have been removed and the hole filled with concrete.
If all goes well, and INL can find the funding, EBR-II's iconic silver dome could be torn down as early as this time next year.
20 miles west of the silver dome, the EBR-I Museum boasts an interactive mockup of the EBR-II reactor and control room display. It's less than one-fifth the size of the original control room.
Miley says, "On this one, visitors can make like they're operating a reactor. We've got some lights on the wall, when you push the button, the lights will come up to show the position of the control rods."
In the next room, you can see a much smaller version of the reactor itself.
You can see the reactor displays at the EBR-I Museum 20 miles east of Arco, Idaho from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day of the week between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.
SRS salt waste project will miss 2015 opening date
Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle
November 20, 2012
A new complex to process salt waste from Savannah River Site's underground storage tanks won't open in 2015 as planned and may require the U.S. Department of Energy to renegotiate cleanup commitments made to the state of South Carolina.
The department, as part of its ongoing effort to clean up Cold War waste in 47 underground tanks, is building a new Salt Waste Processing Facility that will replace interim components of its existing Saltstone Facility, which opened in 1990.
The new facility, with technology that will accelerate cleanup operations, has encountered challenges that included a two-year delay in delivery of storage tanks, which arrived in June. The new projected operation date is 2018.
Because of delays in the new facility the SRS Citizens Advisory Board has questioned whether continued delays would violate cleanup commitments made to the state of South Carolina.
In a Nov. 13 letter to the board, DOE-Savannah River manager David Moody said the Energy Department will discuss the regulatory impacts of the delay with South Carolina officials.
Under a Federal Facilities Agreement, the Energy Department has specified closure dates for the remaining tanks. Those projected dates may require updating if the 2015 opening date is no longer viable.
South Carolina authorities, meanwhile, aren't happy with the newest delay.
"Because of the significance of the SWPF, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control holds an enforceable milestone for DOE to begin operation at this facility in 2015," agency spokesman Jim Beasley told The Augusta Chronicle.
The Department of Energy has begun discussion with DHEC about a possible startup extension request, but has not formally submitted such a request, he said.
"DHEC expects DOE to make every effort to mitigate delay of SWPF startup, including pursuit of sufficient funding and exploration of technical options," he said.
The existing saltstone facility, meanwhile, was reopened in September after a nine-month, $8 million project to improve its efficiency and capacity in preparation for its expanded role when the new plant is completed.
The improved facility processed 1.1 million gallons in September and October for a record two-month processing period, according to a news release from Savannah River Remediation, the site's liquid waste contractor.
DOE continues to shrink Hanford's footprint
Anette Cary, Tri-City Herald
November 25, 2012
The Department of Energy has reduced the 586 square miles of Hanford requiring environmental cleanup to 161 square miles.
In three more years, the land requiring cleanup could be little more than the 75 square miles at Hanford's center as DOE works to complete cleanup outlined in its 2015 Vision, an ambitious plan for work to be completed by the end of 2015.
It's been clear since at least summer that DOE won't be able to finish all the work in the plan announced about five years ago. But DOE says it is on track to come close.
Five years ago, DOE wanted to break out a scope of work that could be completed in the near term to allow the public to see tangible progress in Hanford environmental cleanup, even though completion of all cleanup will stretch out for decades to come.
Key portions of the 2015 Vision included cleaning up 210 square miles of contaminated land along the Columbia River, treating contaminated ground water closest to the river and demolishing the high-risk, highly contaminated Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The plan would go after items of immediate risk, particularly to the Columbia River, while reducing the overhead costs of continuing work across hundreds of square miles. It also would clean up debris on land that never had been used for production, including what's now the Hanford Reach National Monument and previously was a security buffer around the site.
"The vision has served the site well, providing tangible evidence of work," said Matt McCormick, manager of the Hanford DOE Richland Operations Office, in a Herald interview.
But as with most Hanford cleanup projects, unexpected conditions and contamination have been found, increasing the amount of work needed to complete the 2015 Vision.
Near C Reactor, one of the reactors along the river used for weapons-plutonium production, chromium contamination has been more extensive than expected. Contaminated soil has had to be dug up down to ground water, about 85 feet deep. Chromium was added to reactor cooling water to prevent corrosion.
Additional areas of contaminated soil have been found in nearly every cleanup project along the river, adding 170 more waste sites to the work to complete the 2015 Vision. Most challenging is a spill of highly radioactive strontium and cesium found beneath the 324 Building, which housed large hot cells for research with radioactive materials.
The increased contamination has added to the cost of cleanup. Just the additional chromium contamination near reactors along the Columbia River is costing $107 million to clean up.
Recovery Act money gave cleanup a boost under the 2015 Vision for a couple of years. But in the fiscal year just ended, the available budget of $1.04 billion was $20 million below what DOE had planned to keep the 2015 Vision on track, McCormick said.
Money for the work in fiscal 2013 and the next two years also may fall short, he said.
Significant progress has been made toward completing the 2015 Vision. That includes demolishing 357 of 458 buildings or facilities, cleanup of 618 of 995 soil waste sites and getting the last of the irradiated fuel out of storage in the K West Basin.
But McCormick sees five major challenges ahead in completing all the planned work in the 2015 Vision.
With the money available so far this year for the K Basins -- the Department of Energy is being funded under a continuing resolution at least until spring after Congress failed to approve a budget -- DOE will not be able to order all the transportation casks, pumps and piping needed to be manufactured to nuclear quality standards to remove radioactive sludge from the basins.
That, along with technical issues, might not allow the basin attached to the K West Reactor to be emptied of sludge by 2015.
DOE has planned to have the K East Reactor cocooned within three years. Production reactors other than historic B Reactor are being cocooned, or torn down to little more than their radioactive cores, reroofed and sealed up to let radioactivity decay to more manageable levels during 75 years.
However, the basin attached to the K East Reactor leaked contaminated water into the soil in the past, and more time might be needed to assess and deal with that contamination. As a result, DOE is considering cocooning the K East and K West reactors at the same time after 2015.
It could be less expensive to cocoon both reactors at the same time, McCormick said.
Tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant to concrete slabs on the ground also could take additional time, with work possibly being completed in 2016, McCormick said. It's the highest risk facility at Hanford, he said.
High levels of plutonium have been found held up in processing equipment and piping in the building, making work to remove the equipment safely time consuming. It also generates more plutonium-contaminated waste that must be sent to a New Mexico repository, which is more expensive than disposing of waste in a lined landfill at Hanford.
However, DOE originally had planned to get the plant torn down to concrete slabs on the ground at a cost of $2.2 billion by 2019. McCormick expects to finish three years ahead of that schedule and at $900 million less than projected. Part of that savings come from the high overhead costs of maintaining the Plutonium Finishing Plant complex in a safe condition.
At the 300 Area just north of Richland along the Columbia River, DOE expects to have 185 of 186 buildings demolished by 2015. The lone unused building to be torn down is the 324 Building, which had been planned to be torn down in 2013 before the cesium and strontium spill was discovered beneath it.
"It's a job we have to do right," McCormick said.
Radioactivity has been measured at 8,900 rad per hour in the soil. Direct exposure for a few minutes would be fatal, according to DOE contractor Washington Closure Hanford.
The final project included in the 2015 Vision not expected to be completed by 2015 is the notorious 618-11 Burial Ground just outside the parking lot of Energy Northwest's nuclear power plant.
Although DOE once planned to clean up the 618-10 and 618-11 Burial Grounds at the same time, it now plans to finish 618-10 first to gain experience on how to exhume the waste without spreading contamination near Energy Northwest, McCormick said. Containers of highly radioactive waste from research activities were dropped into vertically buried pipes and caissons at the two burial grounds.
Washington Closure now holds the contract to perform cleanup along the Columbia River, and the contract was expected to end with the completion of cleanup there in 2015. Although the contract has not been extended, McCormick called the contractor one of the best performers based on schedule, cost and safety in DOE's nationwide environmental management complex.
"I don't see anyone as well suited to finish river corridor work as Washington Closure," he said.
When all the work under the 2015 Vision is completed, plenty of tough projects will remain.
Then the focus will switch to projects in the heart of Hanford, where irradiated fuel was chemically processed to remove plutonium. Work will continue there under the DOE Office of River Protection to empty radioactive waste from leak-prone tanks and to build the vitrification plant to treat the waste for disposal.
But the office that McCormick leads, the DOE Richland Operations Office, will tackle the rest of the work in the center of Hanford.
All of the massive processing facilities for the fuel still stand in central Hanford, and most of them are extensively contaminated. In addition, almost 2,000 containers of radioactive cesium and strontium are stored underwater in central Hanford and must be moved to dry storage.
Plutonium-contaminated waste was temporarily buried in central Hanford until it could be dug up and sent to a national repository in New Mexico.
And just like near the Columbia River, buildings must be torn down and contaminated soil dug up or treated to protect the groundwater.
Editorial: Stimulus money, efficiency speed Oak Ridge cleanup
News Sentinel Editorial Board
November 26, 2012
Partisans may argue on how effective the Recovery Act was in halting the recent recession, but there is no denying that stimulus money -- coupled with competent project management -- accelerated the daunting environmental cleanup at the federal government facilities in Oak Ridge.
Several Recovery Act-funded projects at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant were completed ahead of schedule and under budget, and officials now are plowing the savings into other remediation projects.
The U.S. Department of Energy will use most of the savings -- reported to be in the range of $26 million to $32 million -- to address mercury discharges that have fouled the environment for decades.
Some of the projects, focused on reducing mercury releases into East Fork Poplar Creek, already are under way.
Y-12 used millions of pounds of mercury to process lithium for use in hydrogen bombs during the cold war. Tons of the toxic liquid metal were spilled, contaminating soils and area waterways.
One project will assess the mercury pollution at a site that once housed a furnace used to recover mercury from Y-12 equipment. Officials say sampling has already uncovered significant quantities of mercury in a concrete pad and soils of the site where the furnace building once stood.
The funds also will pay for mercury traps in the plant's storm sewer to collect mercury before it can reach East Fork Poplar Creek, which has been identified as a health hazard for three decades. Five underground tanks that could be tainted with mercury will be removed, and design work has begun on a water-treatment plant aimed at reducing mercury discharges into East Fork Poplar Creek to regulatory limits.
DOE's Oak Ridge office received about $1.9 billion from the 2009 Recovery Act. About $1.2 billion of that windfall was designated for projects -- ranging from environmental cleanup to construction of new research facilities -- to be carried out in Oak Ridge.
Dozens of old and radioactively contaminated buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 were demolished and removed using stimulus money. According to DOE, seven Y-12 stimulus-funded projects created about 2,000 jobs, demolished about 150,000 square feet of old buildings and got rid of about 74,000 cubic meters of waste. Federal officials say the Recovery Act created or saved 3,863 jobs in Oak Ridge.
The federal operations at Oak Ridge over the decades have provided high-paying jobs to East Tennesseans and have been an economic engine for the region. Unfortunately, they also have polluted the surrounding land and water.
DOE has a responsibility to clean up the contaminants, and using stimulus money to address the problem has been a welcome and appropriate use of the funds. By completing remediation projects under budget, DOE can accelerate the cleanup timetable in Oak Ridge. That is a wise use of taxpayer money.
Rocky Barker: Is there a future in nuclear waste?
Rocky Barker, Idaho Statesman
November 26, 2012
The decision to back away from Yucca Mountain as a long-term nuclear waste storage site is one of the first-term policies of President Barack Obama that is now solidified after his re-election.
That means Congress is going to have to address the long-term future examined by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. The commission recommended developing an interim storage plan for the 70,000 tons of high-level spent nuclear fuel now sitting next to nuclear reactors in states that consent to take it.
Idaho has 300 tons of spent fuel here, and the Navy's plans to ship its waste to Yucca Mountain will have to be changed. In the meantime, Eastern Idaho business and government leaders have sought to get Idaho to join New Mexico, North Carolina and Texas as states proposing their own interim storage sites. The Idaho National Laboratory contractor officials have less ambitious goals to allow more waste in for research purposes.Gov. Butch Otter's 13-member Leadership In Nuclear Energy Commission has been exploring the future of nuclear research at the INL. But its ability to maneuver became limited when former Gov. Cecil Andrus leaked a document from INL contractor Battelle Idaho that showed it wanted to dramatically change the 1995 agreement to keep nuclear waste out of the state negotiated by Gov. Phil Batt.
The commission delayed its final report until Dec. 3. After that, it will take public comments into January.
Idaho voters backed Batt's 1995 agreement with the Department of Energy, 60 to 40 percent, sending the message: Don't send more commercial nuclear waste to Idaho, and get rid of all of the waste that's here by 2035.Otter himself shut the door to the idea that the INL -- or the state for that matter -- would become a nuclear waste repository.
"I'll say this as plainly and as unequivocally as I can: Idaho will NOT be a repository for nuclear waste," Otter wrote in a guest opinion.
Of course, that doesn't address the Navy waste in Eastern Idaho that has nowhere to go. When Idaho hits its deadline in 2035, the federal government can merely pay a fine and continue storing the waste here.
Federal court decisions also have upheld Department of Energy plans to leave some low-level, long-lived nuclear waste in the ground at INL forever, essentially leaving portions of the 890-square mile site as a permanent sacrifice zone.
Batt never envisioned that.
Last week, Doug Sayer, president and CEO of Premier Technology Inc., a Blackfoot company that works in the nuclear industry nationwide, urged the state to consider the economic consequences of federal cutbacks on the INL and the Eastern Idaho economy.
Sayer thinks recycling spent fuel makes more sense than burying it, and he wants Otter's nuclear commission to push for a new agreement with the federal government.
But Sayer wants state control, and he doesn't want the waste at the INL.
"I believe there might be a location in Idaho that is not over the aquifer and that has suitable geology and that the technology exists that would allow us to construct a safe and environmentally sound facility," Sayer said. "I would build it on state endowment lands so all of the revenues would go towards our education system and our universities could manage and operate the facilities, once again generating opportunities and revenues for our state.
"To address the realities of long-term nuclear waste, Idaho needs a new discussion on the level of the 1996 waste initiative campaign.
The Snake River Alliance, the Idaho anti-nuclear group, is certain to oppose any change. And it has the 1996 vote as its defense.
For Idaho to rewrite the nuclear waste agreement, Otter would have to take the lead, campaign hard statewide and get support from Batt and -- ideally -- Andrus. It might take another voter initiative. Many Idahoans today weren't voters in 1996.
Sayer says the state must ask whether his plan makes environmental, social and economic sense.
"If the answers to these questions are no, then I will face the fiscal cliff right along with you," Sayer said.
Cleanup under way at shuttered Hematite nuclear fuel factory
Leah Thorsen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
November 24, 2012
For decades, a factory in rural Jefferson County churned out nuclear fuel and its workers buried radioactive waste in pits.
It was the oldest nuclear fuel manufacturing plant in the country when Westinghouse Electric Co. acquired the plant in 2000 and shuttered it the next year.
"Uranium went in and fuel went out," said Bob Copp, the Westinghouse project manager charged with cleaning up what stayed behind, including radioactive garbage.
These days, the only thing being shipped away is contaminated soil in rail cars -- each loaded with 284,000 pounds of dirt that costs $23,000 to transport and store -- bound for a landfill in the Owyhee Desert of Idaho that accepts low-level radioactive material.
It's part of a $200 million cleanup of the site by Westinghouse. The intensive process of removing the waste from the pits and refilling the holes with clean soil began in March and is expected to be done in the summer, Copp said.
The plant is ringed by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and signs warning of the radioactive material behind it. Flags stuck in the ground mark "hot spots" where such material has been detected. Pollution from heavy metals and other chemicals also lingers.
Past owners of the plant buried radioactive contaminated waste such as old equipment, gloves, shoe covers and overalls on the property in at least 40 unlined pits, the deepest of which is 26 feet.
Copp expects to remove about 2.3 million cubic feet of soil by the time the project is done, with roughly half of that coming from the pits. The total site is 267 acres, although only 28 acres require remediation, said Copp, who has done work on nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom and the Ukraine.
He lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and rents an apartment in Festus. He moved in January and plans to stay until the job is done, which will likely be in late 2014.
A LONG HISTORY
The Hematite factory dates back to 1956, when Mallinckrodt Chemical Works built it on farmland. It went through a series of owners, and until 1974, it produced high-enriched nuclear fuel for the Navy's nuclear submarine program and other reactor programs, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
From 1974 until its 2001 closure, it manufactured nuclear fuel rods for commercial power plants.
Westinghouse started tearing down buildings on the site in 2002, Copp said, including two barns on the property that were there when Mallinckrodt bought the land. They stored contaminated equipment.
The cleanup rules are strict. For example, workers who need water must leave the pits, remove their gloves, go inside and drink. Water is sprayed on the pits daily to prevent potentially polluted dust from entering the air.
Even the powerful heavy equipment is only allowed to scrape six inches of soil at a time so instruments can accurately detect radioactive material.
"It's a very disciplined process," Copp said.
They've found rotted, metal drums and other trash, such as a construction remnants, and even a tailgate from a Studebaker pickup truck -- the last Studebaker was made in 1966.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes the land will be available for "residential, agricultural, and light industrial use in the future."
Copp said it's unknown what Westinghouse will do with the property, which sits in a remote area with few houses directly nearby, once the polluted materials are gone.
Dennis Diehl, director of the Jefferson County Health Department, said he was pleased with how the cleanup has progressed and that Westinghouse has held public meetings to give updates.
"They've kept everybody informed on what's been going on," he said.
BEYOND THE PLANT
Clarissa Eaton, who lived a few miles from the plant for about nine years, filed a petition in 2008 on behalf of a group of former Hematite workers to secure a special designation that would allow compensation claims to be approved without forcing them to prove how they were exposed to the radiation.
Many of the Hematite workers have been seeking help since a federal compensation program was launched in 2001. Since then, the federal government has paid millions of dollars to former nuclear workers who were exposed to radiation through the program managed by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The special designation recognizes that records at many former nuclear weapons production plants have been lost or destroyed, making it difficult for some workers to get compensation.
Eaton said that's what happened at the Hematite plant. One of the employees in her petition was Edward Patterson of Portageville, Mo., who worked at the plant from 1967 to 1971 as a chemical technician and had bladder cancer. He had been seeking compensation since 2004 but died earlier this year, Eaton said.
But in September, the Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health ruled that enough information was available to determine how Hematite workers may have been sickened. It followed the recommendation of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and denied the request for the designation that would have allowed Hematite workers to bypass the step of proving their claims on a case-by-case basis.
"It was like a slap in the face for these people," said Eaton, who moved with her family to Kokomo, Ind., about four years ago after her husband lost his job at the Chrysler plant.
Still, Hematite workers have been able to get compensation from the program. As of Monday, they had been paid more than $7.2 million, according to the Labor Department.
Eaton also got an undisclosed settlement from the company for chemical contamination in her well after a court fight that spanned several years.
She and her husband, who have three children, found out their well was contaminated in 2002. Other neighbors discovered the same thing and sought compensation. The Eatons hired an attorney, who negotiated a $26,000 settlement with companies that owned the plant. But the Eatons argued they never approved such a settlement and that their attorney didn't have authority to accept it. The appeal reached the Missouri Supreme Court, where Eaton argued her case without a lawyer and won a unanimous decision that sent the case back to circuit court.
The Eatons ultimately reached a confidential settlement.
"We were ready for it to go away," Eaton said.
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ECA Board
Election Notice
ECA Executive Committee elections will be held on December 12, 2012.
If you would like to nominate someone or if you are interested in running for a position, please contact Bob Thompson (BThompson@ci.richland.wa.us), Amy Fitzgerald (AFitzgerald@cortn.org), or Pam Brown-Larsen (PBrown@ci.richland.wa.us).
Current ECA Board Nominations
Chair: Mayor Tom Beehan, Oak Ridge, TN
Vice Chair: Council Member Chuck Smith, Aiken County, SC
Secretary: Mayor Steve Young, Kennewick, WA
Treasurer: County Councilor Fran Berting, Los Alamos, NM |