Changing Of The Guard Puts Hanford On Edge New Mission, New Contractor Creates Uncertainty Among Workers
Change has become the norm at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In the past decade, its mission switched from plutonium production to cleaning up the mess left by its role in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
But Wayne Gentry, a crane operator there for 18 years, says he’s hoping for the best from last week’s change, when Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc. replaced Westinghouse Hanford Co., the U.S. Energy Department’s lead contractor on the site since 1987.
“Every time there’s a change, there’s anxiety, worries - will my job change? Will I keep my job? What’s going to happen?” Gentry said. “It’s just wait and see. In today’s world, that’s how everything is. No matter how much worrying you do, you can’t change anything.
“If you come in with a good attitude, things work out usually. And if you need a little extra help, there’s always prayers.”
Greg Graves, a plant engineer who works with Hanford’s 117 underground waste tanks, also was upbeat when Fluor Daniel officially picked up the reins last Tuesday under a five-year, $4.9 billion Energy Department contract.
But like many Hanford workers, he had more questions than answers.
“We’re not sure what to think. We know we’ll be working for another company, but that’s about it. We’ve been told things will stay the same until they change,” Graves said as he sipped from a mug of coffee.
“I think we’ll work through all this uncertainty three to four months down the line.”
Hank Hatch, president of Irvine, Calif.-based Fluor Daniel’s new Hanford subsidiary, said the 54-day transition period was so brief - it was originally scheduled to take four months the new managers haven’t learned enough to make widespread changes.
“We need time to listen and learn,” he said. “Right now, the employees are in a better position to know how to improve the site than we are.”
The biggest upheaval so far was divvying up Hanford’s 8,000 or so workers from the three previous contractors to the 13 companies making up the new management team.
And not everyone is happy with the results.
Employees all receive the same salaries they did under Westinghouse, but benefits are no longer the same across the board. The 1,700 people assigned to six “enterprise” companies expected to attract non-Hanford-related work to the area get leaner benefits while co-workers assigned to the official contractors and subcontractors receive the same package as before.
About 600 white-collar workers have signed lists indicating an interest in becoming plaintiffs in a proposed lawsuit over the benefits change. A San Francisco-based law firm, Schieffer, Jones and Guichard, met with some disgruntled workers earlier this month.
Other workers expressed more general skepticism over the changeover.
“Nothing’s going to change. It’ll still be business as usual here,” said a chemist analyzing radioactive wastes who declined to give his name.
“They’re promising the moon and the stars, but nothing ever changes here. No one’s willing to take a chance and change anything,” said the chemist, who has worked at Hanford for eight years. “They still have the same attitudes they did 40 years ago.”
Two women workers were less than impressed as they listened to Hatch speak about Fluor Daniel’s plans at one of a series of rallies last Tuesday, the first day of the new contract.
Shortly after he began his speech, one woman turned to the other, muttering, “This is boring. He’s not saying anything.” They headed back to their offices, shaking their heads.
But Hatch was determinedly optimistic about the workers’ response to the changeover.
“What I sense is that morale in spite of that uncertainty is very high,” Hatch said. “I think to suggest there’s a morale problem is an insult to the work force.”
The Energy Department’s Hanford manager, John Wagoner, agreed.
“I was impressed with the spirit I saw out there,” said Wagoner, who attended the rallies. “They are telling me about the progress they’re making on their projects and how things are going.
“I met a truck driver who’s been working out here for 30 years who wants us to come back out and he’ll take us around and show us what he does. That doesn’t sound to me like someone with a morale problem.”
The Energy Department has been criticized over the years for spending billions of dollars on the Hanford cleanup with little discernible progress.
When the new contract was announced in August, DOE officials said the Fluor Daniel team promised to speed up efforts to stabilize the volatile underground tanks, reduce hazards from plutonium contamination and remove sludge and debris from reactor-fuel storage basins to reduce risks to the nearby Columbia River.
Fluor Daniel also does cleanup work at the Fernald uranium-processing site in Ohio.
According to a report in the Cincinnati Enquirer earlier this month, Fluor Daniel Fernald was penalized $5 million for poor performance by the Energy Department - and simultaneously given a $100,000 bonus for coming up with an accelerated 10-year cleanup plan.
In a July 30 letter, the department’s Ohio field office manager, J. Phil Hamric, noted delays and cost overruns on a vitrification pilot plant and a thorium overpacking project.
xxxx The cleanup job Hanford produced weapons-grade plutonium for years - from the Manhattan Project of World War II until the late 1980s. Cleanup is expected to take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars. The 560-square-mile reservation on the banks of the Columbia River is considered the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.