Doe Wants To Accelerate Cleanup Of Hanford Sites Department Would Spend $10 Billion In Focusing On Facility’s Most Contaminated Areas

The federal Energy Department said Thursday it wants to spend $10 billion to accelerate cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s most contaminated sites by 2006.

“Basically, the vision put out there today was developed to demonstrate to the Congress how much progress we could really make by the year 2006,” acting Hanford Manager Lloyd Piper said of the draft discussion paper released by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.

No decisions will be made until 1998, which allows time for discussions with the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, Indian tribes and other Hanford “stakeholders,” Piper said.

The plan foresees annual cleanup funding at about the current $1.1 billion, but says advances in technology and productivity can accomplish more with the same amount of money.

It envisions cost-efficiency savings equivalent to about $2.5 billion, which would be plowed back into the cleanup program.

“All urgent risks at the Hanford Site will be eliminated, almost all of the costly mortgages will be reduced, tank wastes will be in the process of being immobilized and high priority waste sites … along the Columbia River will be remediated,” the department said in a release announcing the proposed accelerated cleanup.

Still, the cleanup at Hanford, one of the most contaminated Cold War weapons production sites, is expected to last at least 50 years, the department admitted.

Some milestones set forth in a three-party agreement with the state Department of Ecology and federal Environmental Protection Agency would be met much earlier, although others might have to be renegotiated, Piper said.

“We’re very interested in seeing this document from the Department of Energy,” EPA spokesman Bob Jacobson said from Seattle. “Our people in the region were involved in some early discussions, but it’s been some months since and we’re interested in seeing the plan for ourselves.”

The draft plan calls for stabilizing stored plutonium, resolving many of the thorny issues connected with high-level waste tanks and removal or interim dry storage of all remaining spent nuclear fuel.

The department said it can save maintenance money in the long term by accelerating cleanup of contaminated buildings and structures, or “mortgages,” such as the Plutonium-Uranium Extraction Plant and K Basin spent fuel storage area.

Four of nine defunct plutonium-producing reactors along the Columbia River would be placed in “interim safe storage,” 410 waste sites would be cleaned up and 2.6 million cubic yards of contaminated soil would be disposed of.

The Energy Department and its contractors have had difficulty meeting guidelines set forth in the landmark Tri-Party Agreement, but Piper said the accelerated schedule would improve performance.

“We would hope that we would be completing them ahead of schedule, rather than struggling to meet the exact schedule,” Piper said.

“This envisions not just productivity, but finding technical improvements” to enhance productivity, he said. “We’re relying quite heavily on finding new technologies at Hanford to be more cost-effective … and get better results in cleanup.”

The Energy Department conceded that Hanford will take much longer to clean than most nuclear sites, largely because of the complexity of removing, processing and disposing of high-level radioactive and chemical wastes in 177 underground storage tanks, some of which are leaking.

The 560-square-mile nuclear reservation also contains numerous other contaminated radioactive waste sites and buildings.