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'A. be? So far specific levels of tasks into a series of more manageable , ' decontamination, consistent milestones leading to a specific out- ; with an intended ultimate come. The contractor's compensation use, have not been set at most depends partly or wholly on when and sites. In fatt, the U.S. govern- how well it meets the milestones. Simi- L ment sell has no standazd s lar v ersions are also bein tm lemente d g P i IpT I" that can be used to determine at other DOE tom lexes besi des Han- _ P when a radiological cleanup ford and also in the contract the DOE _ i~ is complete. The goal of re- has wi[h Bechtel Hanford, another t turning all of Hanford to large contrattor at the site. ~ pristine condition-an utter Thomas P. Grumbly, who was assis- impossibility made plain by Cant secretary in charge of the Environ- themost rudimentary analy- mental Management program unril his sis-has only recently fallen recent promotion to undersecretary of i by the wayside. As spokes- energy, has high hopes for the rech- ~ man Michael V. Berriochoa niques. The idea, he adds, is [o "work of Westinghouse Hanford on the economics first and realize that - puts it, "There isn't enough the economics, over time, will really money in the world." change the system. How much time: [ ~ don't know. Four or five years." ~ Irtr roved Contractin ~ Althou p g. gh most observers say perfor- mance-based contracting is too new co W A (though the peculiaz na- judge, a former DoE official intimately ~ tore of Hanford often familiar with [he Environmental Man- s defies conventional metrics agemenc program is pessimistic. To de- - of cleanup, there is also am- contaminate a building, the former „ ple evidence that utuch of official explains, a contract would have the wod: done so far has to specify that "the building contairs DRUMS OF CONTAMINATED SOLVENT were been grossly inefficient. By the following contaminants in the fol- simply buried in the soil 35 yeazs ago; most of them [he DOE's own esnmates, lowing concentrations. If you don't -re decayed and leaked their contents. Unlike many of cleanup projects started be- know what they are, you would have Hanford's 1,400 waste sires, though, [he contatnina- tween 1989 and 1994 were to issue a separate contract just to do tion in the case shown here was relatively confined. 30 to 50 percent more expen- the assessment, so you can write a 4~.-~ sive than their equivalents in specific enough contratt to do the job with the state legally requires the DOE the private Bettor. right. I have no confidence that the DoE ro bury in the 200 Area eight of the Because virually all work at the can get all the detailed knowledge to nine reactor blocks (the cores of the pro- weapons sites is done by private con- make it work. They would have to rely duction reactors where the uranium cracting companies hired by the DOE, on the convattors themselves to do rods were inserted) and their concrete the ways contracts are written and those assessmenu, in all probability." pedestals, sometime around 2070. struttured can strongly influence the John D. Wagoney the manager of the Each reactor block and its pedestal cost of work. Unfortunately, the DOE's DOE's Richland Operations Office, says comprise an enormous, highly radioac- traditional contracting method, known that the DOE has called in the consult- tive pair of slabs weighing 15,000 tons. as a cost-plus or cost-reimbursal sys- ing firm Arthur Andersen to help write The leading plan for hauling them to [em, penalizes efficiency and [hrift. Un- the next round of performance-based the 200 Area involves the use of a 540- der this scheme, the DOE reimburses a contratts. (Ironically, the contract with million crawling transporter; according contractor for all its expenses in mak- Andersen is no[performance-based.) to the Blush and Heitman repot[, one ing a produtt or performing a service. Whatever its coven[ difficulties, per- DOE official called the idea "lunanc." Additionally, the DOE gives the con- formance-based convacring cannot be The additional costs of moving the re- tractor a percen[age as profi[; the more worse Chan the cost-plus system, many actors-rather [hen entombing them in spent, the greater the profit. The system observers insist. "convacring has been place, as many technical analysts fa- is a holdover from the early weapons at the heart of the problems they've vor-have been put ac $500 million. days, when the risks and costs were had," notes James Noel, assistant direc- When the hundreds of thousands of largely unknown and constantly Chang- for for energy issues of [he GAO. tons of waste have been consolidated, ing. Cleanup persormel may also fear stabilized, packaged and redisposed in that the harder they work, the sooner Legal Hammer the 200 Area, basically all the plateau's they will be unemployed. At Hanford, 130 square kilometers will become a de DOE spokesman Terry L. Brown notes, ~ ontratting, though, is not all that facto repository, in all likelihood for "you hear a dot of [elk: `I'm working ails Hanford by any means. In thousands of years to come. (The shoe- myself out of .job.'" 1989, around the time of the Rocky lived DoE euphemism for such regions In 1994, to try to deal with these Flats crackdown, the DOE, the EPA and was "national sacrifice areas.") problems, the DOE and Westinghouse the state of Washington signed an ex- And once this consolidation has been Hanford switched roperformance-based haustive Tri-Parry Agreement (TPA), accomplished, how clean will Hanford contratts. The approach separate huge which governs almost all aspects of en- 94 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1996 Nan ford's Nuc(msWasttland