Hanford Work Criticized In Energy Review Westinghouse Practices At Plutonium Plant And Storage Facility Detailed In Federal Report

The management contractor has done a substandard job of overseeing a defunct plutonium factory and radioactive storehouse at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the U.S. Department of Energy said.

The Oregonian recently obtained the Energy Department review of Westinghouse Hanford Co.’s management of the B-Plant complex and reported on it in Saturday editions.

The report listed 62 instances of poor work practices, including Westinghouse charging the federal government $30,000 last year for nonexistent safety drills at B-Plant.

Westinghouse analyzed actual but minor mishaps as drills, instead of staging major emergencies to test the performance of personnel and equipment, the report said.

B-Plant is an old plutonium plant. It adjoins the Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility, which holds 1,878 cylinders of strontium-90 and cesium-137.

“The assessment team found B-Plant/ Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility to be marginal from a compliance stand-point and less than satisfactory from a performance standpoint,” the report said.

The report also criticized Westinghouse for taking an average 87 days to make certain repairs. One reason for the backlog was that Westinghouse was fixing or replacing equipment that never would be returned to service, Energy Department inspectors said.

For instance, Westinghouse spent $15,000 in tax money to bring B-Plant steam fittings up to code, although the system was about to be shut down. The company also spent thousands of dollars fixing asbestos hazards although B-Plant was inactive.

The department conducted the inspection in June and sent a 51-page assessment to Westinghouse in July.

Bob Heineman, who took over as B-Plant manager a year ago, told The Oregonian that he didn’t disagree with the report. However, some of the findings could have been placed in a better perspective, he said.

Westinghouse wasn’t attempting to defraud the government with emergency drill charges, but it made a mistake by using real mishaps that didn’t necessarily teach the most important safety lessons.

“The people in the facility were just charging their time to that particular (drill) account when they were doing their critiques and doing their improvement actions,” Heineman said. “We didn’t hire anybody to do this work. We weren’t out spending money.”

He called it primarily a bookkeeping matter.

John C. Britton, a Westinghouse spokesman, said the company agrees with the department that using actual incidents for training purposes did not eliminate the need for drills to test responses to serious emergencies.

As for repairing and upgrading equipment that would be junked, Heineman said Westinghouse wasn’t told until last month to deactivate B-Plant.

Under its contract with the government, Westinghouse was required to keep B-Plant in standby condition in case it had to be used to help with cleanup.

“Until October of this year, we had no deactivation order,” Heineman said.

B-Plant was completed in April 1945 as Hanford’s second plutonium-separation factory. New processes eventually made the plant obsolete, and it was retired in 1956.

It was refurbished and reopened in the 1960s to remove cesium and strontium from waste-storage tanks. The two radio-active isotopes created so much heat they made some of the tanks boil.

By 1984, B-plant had separated much of the cesium and strontium from the waste. The isotopes were packed into stainless steel capsules and submerged in water.

The cesium and strontium capsules continue to emit strong gamma rays, creating a soft blue glow at the bottom of the cooling pool. Even now, the surface temperature of a capsule is about 425 degrees - hot enough to bake a pizza.

Other Energy Department complaints include poorly kept logbooks; confusing emergency-procedure instructions; and unlabeled valves in the plant.

Westinghouse has sent the department a 195-point correction plan.

“We’re about halfway through those,” Heineman said.