Fuel Removal Plan Commended

A regional Hanford advisory board is praising a new plan to speed up removal of dangerous fuel rods from the unstable K Basins near the Columbia River.

But board members are angry that the U.S. Department of Energy may cripple their oversight role by slashing their budget.

At a meeting in Spokane Friday, The Hanford Advisory Board was briefed on the plan to remove 2,300 tons of spent fuel from the K Basins - two obsolete, million-gallon storage ponds.

“We’re going to set speed records for doing this,” said John Fulton, Westinghouse Hanford Co. project manager.

“This is an example of what we want - to get on with cleanup,” said board president Merilyn Reeves.

The highly radioactive rods are Hanford’s No. 1 safety concern. They hold 4.3 tons of plutonium and contain nearly 80 percent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s entire spent fuel inventory.

The fuel in the K East Basin is releasing radiation into the storage pool, which leaked in the 1970s and again in 1993.

The rods will be stored up to 200 years in a facility to be built on the existing foundation of a canceled nuclear waste project, the Hanford vitrification plant.

Using that site will save a year and cut up to $15 million off the price tag, Fulton said.

When the project is complete, the huge cost of maintaining the K Basins will drop dramatically from $100,000 a day to $3,000 a day, Fulton said.

The project is not threatened by budget cuts, said Beth Sellers, project manager in DOE’s Richland office.

“We are being protected. This is our highest priority project,” Sellers said.

During the board’s two-day Spokane meeting, members criticized DOE for slashing its 1996 budget to $600,000 from nearly $1 million this year.

Of that total, $240,000 is earmarked for DOE and contractor officials to attend board functions - leaving only $360,000 for the board itself.

That may cripple its ability to hire expert consultants to evaluate projects. That’s a mistake because the board has saved taxpayers money, Reeves said.

The board commissioned a $40,000 study this year that scuttled a $400 million DOE plan to build more double-shell tanks at Hanford, Reeves said.

It also has given DOE important advice on privatizing cleanup work, building a new pipeline for nuclear waste transfers, and moving ahead with dry storage of the K Basin fuel, she said.

“We need help from outside experts, and I don’t apologize for that. This board has been very cost-effective for DOE,” Reeves said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FUEL ROD REMOVAL The $350 million project will: Remove the first canisters from the K Basins in November 1997 and finish by December 1999 - three years early. Take the fuel elements out, repackage them, and freeze-dry the contents to remove moisture. Store the canisters and dry them further in a new fuel conditioning facility.