Hanford Board Pushes For Study Urges Doe To Consider Cutting Costs By Privatizing Cleanup

An advisory board stopped short Friday of endorsing privatization of cleanup activities on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

But the 33-member Hanford Advisory Board agreed to urge the U.S. Energy Department to study privatization as a method to cut costs.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that private companies can do it cheaper than government contractors,” said board member Gerald Sorensen from Battelle’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory. “I do agree we need a lot of answers (before fully endorsing privatization) but I’m glad the board is coming out in favor of privatization as a concept.”

That sentiment was far from universal among board members. Many complained during a Thursday work session about the lack of information provided by the Energy Department.

“I have almost no confidence in the Department of Energy to make privatization work, particularly on large scales,” said board member Charles Kilbury of the Pasco City Council.

The board was established in January 1994 by the Energy Department to give the public input on policy decisions at Hanford. The federal agency is not obligated to follow any of the board’s recommendations.

The board also urged the Energy Department to:

Reduce overhead costs by an amount more than the reduction in cleanup allocations.

DOE Hanford Manager John Wagoner agreed that cuts need to be made. But, he said, “Overhead is not an activity that is optional. I don’t know of any business that operates without overhead.

“It’s hard to get people to work unless you give them a paycheck, and then you have the overhead of operating a payroll department,” Wagoner said.

Evaluate possible uses of two of the four nuclear power plants that were uncompleted in the 1980s by the Washington Public Power Supply System.

Board member Gordon Rogers, from the Tri-Cities Technical Center, suggested Plants No. 1 and 4 be used for temporary storage of nuclear waste. The supply system only finished one of its planned nuclear power plants, known as No. 2.

Some board members strongly objected to the idea of putting nuclear waste into the partially built nuclear reactors, located about a mile from the banks of the Columbia River.

Sorensen pointed out the potential benefits.

“The facilities could probably be purchased for pennies on the dollar,” Sorensen said. Although the location may not be ideal, “if we can save several million dollars by using an existing facility, then I think we should look at it.”

Continue to accelerate the deactivation of unneeded facilities but try to keep the resulting savings for use for other Hanford cleanup activities.

“If we’re going to take money from other programs to retire these mortgages, it would be nice if the money came back to Hanford to make up for those programs being cut,” said moderator Walt Hays, of Confluence Northwest.

DOE is paying more than $200 million a year to keep facilities on “standby” or other intermediate status at Hanford.

Deactivation - involving a final cleanup and removal of equipment, ventilation systems and other materials - could cut those costs in half over the next decade, DOE has said.

Assign costs related to nuclear materials, such as plutonium, uranium and spent fuel, to defense programs or nuclear energy programs.

The board does not want the necessary maintenance, security and other costs associated with the nuclear materials to come out of Hanford’s cleanup budget.

Wagoner protested that the board was basically simply asking for an accounting change.

“The money will need to be spent to deal with these materials out of some account,” Wagoner said. “The question is how much needs to be spent, not which (ledger) column the money comes from.”

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