Hanford Critics Fail Acid Test Watchdog Group Criticized For Getting Information From Tabloid
Hanford officials are rapping a Seattle nuclear watchdog group for relying on a British tabloid to criticize Hanford waste-handling policies.
The tabloid reported last month that a gallon of “hot” nitric acid from Hanford’s defunct PUREX plant was temporarily lost en route to England.
On Thursday, a Hanford official said the story was wrong - and chastised Heart of America Northwest for distributing it.
“This shipment was never lost in the mail as stated by Heart of America,” said Tom Bauman, a U.S. Department of Energy spokesman.
The flap comes at a time when DOE headquarters wants to ship 183,000 gallons of PUREX nitric acid to Britain to extract the uranium.
Under the plan, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. would keep the acid and the uranium would be returned to Hanford as part of the U.S. weapons stockpile.
The nitric acid was used at PUREX to extract plutonium and uranium for nuclear weapons, becoming mildly radioactive in the process. It no longer was needed after PUREX was shut down in 1990.
A DOE environmental assessment says the Hanford acids will be sent by truck and ship to Sellafield, British Nuclear’s reprocessing plant in northern England.
“We hope Hanford officials will explain why radioactive contaminated nitric acid was shipped to Britain via air,” said Gerald Pollett, executive director of Heart of America.
It was sent air freight to provide the British with a small lab sample in advance of the larger shipments, Bauman said.
The acid was trucked from PUREX to Seattle on Jan. 13, and was flown to Amsterdam by air charter on the 15th.
While it apparently never was lost, there was confusion surrounding the shipment, according to a Westinghouse Hanford Co. memo. Due to a severe storm, the shipment couldn’t make it across the English Channel by ferry for three days. But the charter company reported it had been moved to England “when in fact it was still in Amsterdam,” the memo said.
The acid never was misrouted to Rotterdam, as the British newspaper reported, Bauman said. It finally arrived in Sellafield on the 21st.