Trash shipments to Hanford halted

YAKIMA – The U.S. Department of Energy is immediately halting shipments of radioactive trash from Ohio to the Hanford nuclear reservation after learning that a contractor provided inconsistent data about environmental effects of waste disposal there, the agency announced Friday.

The Energy Department, which manages the south-central Washington site, planned to begin shipping some radioactive waste from the Battelle Columbus Laboratory in Ohio to Hanford next week.

Those plans were put on hold Friday when the 2004 environmental impact statement governing solid waste disposal at Hanford came into question.

The statement was completed by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, an Energy Department science lab managed by Battelle.

A spokesman for PNNL declined comment and referred all calls to the Energy Department. A message seeking comment also was left at Battelle’s Columbus headquarters.

The environmental impact statement outlines the expected effect of storing nuclear waste in a proposed burial ground at Hanford.

But data scientists used to determine the effects on groundwater differed from data that appeared in the final report, the Energy Department said.

The discrepancies were uncovered as part of a lawsuit filed by Washington state to block waste shipments to Hanford. The Energy Department learned of the discrepancies late Wednesday, officials said.

“As of today, we do not have sufficient information to determine if the data in question will significantly alter the conclusions of the EIS,” said Charles Anderson, a deputy assistant Energy Department secretary.

Anderson also said the department planned to review the data in question and Battelle’s quality assurance process.

The environmental impact statement was completed for a proposed nuclear waste burial ground at Hanford. The facility, which has not yet been permitted by the state, would store low-level and mixed low-level waste.

The Energy Department did not immediately plan to withdraw the environmental impact statement despite the discrepancies.

In one case, the data used in the groundwater modeling differed from the data that appeared in the final report. In another case, the computer model testing the length of time contaminants need to travel to groundwater tested for 1,000 years instead of 10,000 years.

In May, a federal judge kept in place a temporary ban on shipping some radioactive trash to the Hanford site, but ruled that the state must accept some transuranic waste from Ohio.

Transuranic waste typically is debris – such as clothing, equipment and pipes left over from nuclear weapons production – that has been contaminated both with plutonium and hazardous chemicals.

The state had filed suit to bar offsite shipments, fearing the waste would be stranded at the 586-square-mile Hanford site.

The Ohio waste was to be temporarily stored at Hanford pending permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. For that reason, the problems with the environmental impact statement do not affect the shipments, although the Energy Department halted them anyway.

In a filing Friday in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Washington, the Energy Department asked a judge to continue a preliminary injunction barring the shipment of offsite low-level and mixed low-level waste to Hanford until the agency has completed its review.

The agency also asked that the deadline to complete the discovery phase of the case be postponed to allow that review to be completed.

The review is expected to take up to three months.

Washington state officials said they were pleased the Energy Department plans to examine its environmental review, but warned the public should be assured full access.

“We especially want the Department of Ecology to be given full access, and that they not use the ongoing lawsuit as an excuse to keep us at arm’s length,” said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology. “Because, frankly, it’s our lawsuit that uncovered this mistake.”

For 40 years, the Hanford nuclear site made plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.

Today, it is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.